A Closer Walk with Gandhi

I saw the movie Gandhi when it first came out.  It is still my favorite movie all these decades later because it changed my life.  I saw it in a Chicago theater on a very busy crowded street.  I remember when I stumbled out of the dark theater and the meditatively paced 3 hour movie, feeling overwhelmed and bombarded by the cacophony of traffic noises and neon flashing lights and commercial advertising.

Raised Quaker I had of course always been raised to admire Gandhi as a powerful non-violent activist who had freed his whole country through non-violent resistance.   But I did not at that point know very many details of his life or his struggle.  It certainly also helped to have the beauty of India on a gigantic screen to make his life seem very three dimensional to me.  I felt a deep peacefulness as I watched the movie.  The same peacefulness I experienced if I was in a Gathered Meeting for worship.

But what I was really struck by first was how the campaigns that he lead against the British had so much moral power.  Since the movie is long I had time to reflect on how it was that he picked just the right thing, how he made hard choices to fast or to risk arrest or assault?  Slowly it dawned on me as scene after scene showed him in meditation, or prayer, or spinning prayer, that he was not "figuring it out", that he was listening to God and he was as Quakers believe, receiving answers.

As I walked down that raucous street afterwards, Gandhi taught me something about being Quaker.  I was in my earlier 20's.  Until that time going to Meeting was something which I did on Sunday.   It was almost like God lived there in the Meeting house and I went to visit, and then went home for the rest of the week and lived the rest of my life.   It suddenly dawned on me as I reflected on the movie that there was this possibility to live my life from that deep centered place from whence the direction of the Divine came from.  I was awe struck by the Majesty and Possibility that was there if one lived ones whole life, every minute in faithfulness - not just Sundays.  I immediately decided that that was the life I really wanted.

I wish I could say that I have in fact successfully done that.   But of course few of us are Gandhi or Mother Theresa.   However, it has never left me that that is in fact my goal and my horizon line and I think that changed my whole life.  I will often become aware that it has been a long time since I stopped to really hear God's voice or to center, and then I am pulled back to that effort because I do know it is the only true North on the compass.

When I had my daughter, I for practical reasons, took an almost 15 year break from activism...but as I started to wade back into it I simply began to do the activism that I had been taught before Gandhi.   The kind where you think of strategies and implement them.  Where you make allies and work with them.  And sadly where you enumerate the reasons to be angry with your "opponent" and act on those.  However, a series of events cast me out of that way of doing things and reminded me that there is another way of doing things that involves being faithful in our quest for justice and following that Inner Compass for direction and that is what I am trying to do now.   I think it is a closer walk with Gandhi.

The Rise of Fascism in America and what to do about it

The 14 Signs of Fascism

This is part two of a series of posts:  If you have not read the previous one I recommend starting there:

http://thefriendlyseeker.blogspot.com/2016/11/transformation-trumps-or-our-own.html
Why you might ask when the news is already depressing enough about the incoming presidents plans for us would I focus on the even more depressing idea that this represents a turn towards fascism?  Because I do not feel we can adequately respond to it till we truly understand 1) the dynamics of fascism and 2) that this did not happen overnight but has been part of a 16 year slide into fascism.  There is an opportunity in this crisis but it is one we can only grasp if we understand the nature of the crisis.

As mentioned in my past blog post, scholar, Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each.  In reflecting upon them I realize that the US slide into fascism started during the Bush Administration with the 9/11 event, but has also continued during the Obama administration. The neo-liberal policies of both the Clinton Administration and the Obama administration have allowed the consolidation of wealth by the 1% while the real income of the working class and most of the middle class has declined.  The very real fear that most of the population has about their declining economic status is why the population was responsive to Trumps rallying cry of fear, hate and his claim to be the available hero to save us.  (Just as German's poor after WWI responded to Hitler's claim that he would make Germany great again and improve its economy.)  It is essential at this moment in US history that we confront the reality of the threat of fascism if we are to stand up to it.

Below in red is the summery of Britt's 14 points.  In black following each point is my commentary on where I see the US at this time in relationship to this.

1. Exuberant nationalism

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic images, slogans and symbols - National flags are seen everywhere in public display. Territorial aggression is explained to be mere destiny -- an unbidden greatness thrust upon the nation by history.

It is this burden of unique responsibility that now raises the fascist state above all previous constraint, no longer bound by international obligations, treaties or law.

When President Obama was first running for office he did not wear a flag pin on his lapel.  He was so roundly criticized as "unAmerican" for this that he began to do so.  Both US torture, US holding of people on Guantanamo without a way to get off, and US use of drones have all been the breaking of international laws and have been justified as part of the unique responsibility the US has policeman of the world and therefore necessary.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Fascist regimes foster an artificial climate of fear by intentionally amplifying stress and anxiety. Citizens naturally feel a strong need for security and are easily persuaded to ignore abuses in the name of safety. The few still willing to question are met with bullying and smear campaigns of intimidation.

 Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Legislative bodies, if still in existence at all, are cowed into rubber-stamp submission with occasional ceremonial opposition. The judiciary tends to become activist in support of state views. The public often looks away, or even enthusiastically approves as rights are stripped away.

The concept of the individual inevitably yields ground, exchanged for the promised safety of the all-powerful state.

In my mind the key turning point in the US towards this slippery slope was the US response to 9/11 as modeled by George W.   The Patriot Act was a surrender of many of our civil rights, justified by the need to keep us safe from the treat of terrorism.   For a number of years till that part was repealed it actually said the libraries could turn over lists of what books we read to security agencies!   We all willingly agreed to be patted down and our stuff gone through by the TSA to keep us "safe" from terrorists.  Without this specter of the dangerous enemy Americans would have considered all of those things to be incredible and unacceptable intrusions into privacy.   This slippery slope was such that by the time it was discovered during the Obama administration that the FBI and NSA had been getting all our phone records, texts, and emails from our providers for decades, Americans responded for the most part with a yawn.  I cannot tell you how many people I heard saying "I'm not doing anything wrong, so what is there to be concerned about."  Perhaps with a benign government there is nothing to worry about, but if you imagine living in Nazi Germany and the Nazi's being able to read all your texts or emails I think you quickly understand what a basis for controlling a population that is.

This sentence above is very interesting:   "the people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc."   For most of our countries history the US has seen ourselves as a moral example - calling out other countries for torture, etc.   But under the W administration, as we know, torture was justified by his inhouse lawyers, and while it was controversial when it came to light - it was also debated. The administration and many others defending the torture as again justified by the need to conquer terrorists.   While the Obama administration condemned it, Obama then started using armed drones to assassinate specific terrorist targets, including one US citizen who had gone over to the other side, but certainly had no trial.   These drones often missed their targets and killed civilians and yet Americans for the most part turned their heads away again feeling the need to be safe against the external enemy.   And when Bin Laden was assassinated (rather than captured which he could have been) most American's simply cheered.   All of these events unfolding over a decade slowly wore down our sense of the importance of due process.

The above also mentions the court becoming activist for the state.  As we know Bush was able to make enough appointments to the Supreme Court to give it an activist conservative bent.  Then during the Obama years the Republicans blocked his court appointments at all levels, with the final insult being the refusual to allow him his constitutional right to appoint a Supreme Court justice to the opening that had come in his term which would have tilted the court to the left.   While Democrats and pundits howled about this, they mainly talked about it terms of the political battle.   Little did I hear words like "subverting the constitution" or disenfranchising the voters who voted for Obama so that he would make that appointment.

3. Enemies Identified

This national cause is identified as unity against enemies - The people are rallied around a unifying patriotism directed against some common threat: communists, liberals, a racial, ethnic or religious minority, intellectuals, homosexuals, terrorists, etc.

The state's message is sometimes couched in an easily recognized religious theme. Amazingly, this language is used even when the full context of the teaching shows the meaning to be diametrically opposed. Any dissent is "siding with the enemy", and therefore treasonous.

During the campaign Trump laid out for us the list of targets: Muslims of any kind, illegal immigrants, Mexicans, handicapped people, women...and despite his verbiage the LBGQ community, Jews,  and people of color all know he is coming for them as has become increasingly clear with his Alt right cabinet picks.  The focus on "terrorists" by both Bush and Obama since 2001 has this country well trained to unify against a common enemy. It is quite scary to many of us that Trump keeps enemy lists - because always in history when leaders kept such lists those on them were in danger.  The above talks about the religion of the majority being manipulated.   The US majority religion is Christianity which Republican presidents have been wrapping themselves in and using phrases like "the moral majority" for quite a while.  While there is no evidence that Trump is infact a practicing Christian he none the less has associated himself with the Christian Right as a power base, and they have been remarkably willing to over look at least a dozen behaviors that they would have condemned a Democrat to hell for, out of their desire to also be partnered with a power base.  Do not forget that the Christian churches were silent against Hitler, and thus used by him.

4. Obsession with National security

Obsession with secrecy and national security - The workings of government become increasingly hidden. Questioning of authority is discouraged at all levels of society. From office talk at the water cooler up through the entire apparatus of rule, guarded speech and secrecy become ends in themselves.

Troubling questions are muted and entire areas of scrutiny are placed out of bounds by simply invoking "national security".

Well as already indicated the whole TSA business has been an obsession with national security.   We all know from the numerous things we have accidentally carried on planes that the screenings in fact do not catch all the forbidden items, nor is that even possible.  (Even without them someone could still over power a pilot).  But it is a ritual of security that creates a false sense of security at the same time that it teaches us to submit.  Since then we have started having to be searched to go into public buildings as well.  The Obama administration while campaigning on promises of transparency has been consistently rated as the least transparent Presidency so far.  The leaked Hillary emails reveal much secret behind the scenes efforts to undermine Sanders and mask certain positions she had taken.  Trump has already kicked the press out of his plane, so more secrecy coming.

5. Military Glorified

Supremacy of the military - The military establishment receives a disproportionate share of government resources, even as pressing domestic needs are neglected. Individual soldiers and military culture are glamorized and made constantly visible.

This provides both an object for public glorification, as well as sharp warning to possibly restless citizens that the power of the state stands close at hand, ready to use its great potential for violence.

Right now the US military, past (debt), present and future consumes 57% of the US discretionary budget (meaning not including self funded entitlement programs).  This is down from 62% when Obama took office.  If it has not been this way for decades, we would recognize this is insanity.  Eisenhower warned of every missile built being a theft from the hungry; but forward we march.  Trump has announced plans to build "new nuclear weapons"  (why? The old ones can destroy the earth many times over) and to expand the Navy (why? The military is not even asking for that seeing that as old technology).  While all this goes on we have much higher levels of homelessness, infant mortality, or hunger than many other nations.

We have now for years been giving our "used" military equipment to the nation's police departments, so suddenly we have the police driving armored vehicles and sound grenades etc down the street when facing non-violent protesters.   At Occupy, at Black Lives Matter rallies, and at Standing Rock we see the heavily militarized police in their Darth Vader like outfits treating the crowds with intense aggression and tear gasing and macing them in the face when they are posing no safety threat.  The fact that the company building the DAPL pipeline has offered to pay the police overtime for the DAPL protests makes very very clear who the police are there to serve.

The outright murder of Black and brown people by the police with no repercussions certainly has sent a clear message that the police are here to control the citizenry not to protect them.

6. Corporations Shielded

Corporate power is protected - Typically, a segment of the business elite plays a major role in bringing fascists to national leadership, often from an unsavory obscurity. This marriage of big money and raw violence is often considered by historians to be the hallmark and backbone of fascism.

So the passage by the stacked and activist Supreme Court of Citizens United was so alarming to even establishment politicians that Obama called them out sitting right in front of him at his first State of the Union Speech.  He knew and Hillary Clinton, the plaintiff against them, knew that the rise of Super Pac's and dark money would finish the job of corporations buying and owning politicians.   We have seen record numbers of Super Pac donations as we have watched our Congress more and more serve corporate interests.  Citizen's United conferred the rights of humans onto Corporations.  The Corporations then sought in TPP to extend these same Corporate rights internationally.   An amazing coalitions of labor, environmental and human rights activists acted to stop this.   Trump drove the final nail in the coffin.  When he understands what it really was, he will probably try to revive it.   NAFTA, passed by Bill Clinton, began the process of giving corporations the ability to sue on behalf of their profits over the laws of nations.   As for the sentence above:" the business elite brings fascists to national leadership, often from an unsavory obscurity."  I would say that is the definition of making a reality tv star the president.

7. Corruption Unchecked

Rampant cronyism and corruption - Fascist states maintain power through this relatively small group of associates, mutually appointing each other to interlocking and rotating positions in government, business and the military.

With this degree of control, they make full use of both official secrecy and the ready threat of state violence to insulate themselves from any meaningful criticism. They are not accountable and are shielded from scrutiny in a way unthinkable in a democratic society.

Government service and lobbying has been rotating for decades.  But as we watch Trump pick his cabinet, where past support, especially financial support is more important than competence, the cronyism is clear.  The fact that Chris Christie was just implicated in corruption as Govenor of NJ and may well be prosecuted is no disqualifier.   Trump has also shown himself on the campaign trail to be completely incapable of receiving criticism and remaining calm, but simply adds his critics to his enemy list and responds with counter attacks.

8. Media Controlled

Mass media - Sometimes the media are controlled directly by clumsy government functionaries. At other times, sympathetic corporate media insiders shape the themes indirectly, and therefore more skillfully. Image regularly wins out over content as the "news" is presented breathlessly and with flashy stage effects.

A practiced formula of tenacious repetition brings even the most absurd lie into acceptance over time. By design, the very language itself and the coloration employed will push alternate views "out of the mainstream".

The terms of any remaining debate are narrowly defined to the state's advantage, making it easy to marginalize a truly differing perspective. Censorship and "self-censorship", especially in wartime, is common.

This is a particularly disturbing area.   The reductions of regulations against monopolies has allowed for the increased consolidation of media to where news, radio and tv are no longer separate sources, but rather all are owned by just 5 companies in America (with a further merger of Time/Warner with ATT threatened at the moment.)  The pressure to not lose advertising revenue has for decades reigned reporters in, and the push for news to be "entertaining" and not depressing to keep the ratings up, has also slowly muzzled good reporting. The Internets threat to newspapers has reduced the number of people actually paid to do investigative reporting.  People feel happy to receive their news from the internet allowing many to receive information that is not factually based, biased at best, outright propaganda at worst.   The fact that search engines now search with bias...ie learning what sources and biases the person is already drawn to and showing results from those and not the other side means increasingly the polarized US does not even share same news sources.  The death of net neutrality under the incoming Trump administration will seal off one of the few sources of open assess to uncensored information.

With the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war we saw prohibitions against showing the coffins coming back because the right had learned the lesson of the Vietnam war, that showing the horror of the war made people against it.  The "embedded reporters" brought many jokes about "being in bed with", because it indeed meant that what was shown to us of our US wars was controlled by the US govt and the military.

When 400,000 people marched in NYC against climate in 2015 and it was not reported by mainstream media, I knew we were in trouble.  But when recently 5 people I know turned the emergency turn off valves on all 5 pipelines carrying oil into the US from the Tar Sands, and not one major media outlet covered it, I knew that we had lost free press in the US.  To control what people even are aware is happening, is indeed a very serious way of controlling the population.

It was breath taking to watch during the Trump campaign that no matter what lie he spun out, the media rarely called him on it.  Even the ones he was called on, he simply kept repeating till they became part of the public thinking, regardless of the lack of factual basis.  Fact checkers be damned.

9. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed

to the government's policies or actions.

As already mentioned Christianity being the most common religion in the US, Trump has wrapped it as a cloak around himself and the Fundamentalist right have forgiven him all his sins.  The Right for a long time has been using things like abortion, evolution, climate change and Gay rights as wedge issues even though there is more than one way to read the Bible in relationship to these issues.  They have used them to turn out voters and increasingly these issues became litmus tests for Republican politicians.  They risked not being funded by their own party if they did not toe the party orthodoxy.

10. Rampant Sexism

Rampant sexism - Governments of fascist states tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Traditional gender roles are made even more rigid and exaggerated. Virulent homophobia is commonly built into broad policy.

This is a piece that was not present in the Obama administration.  He often nominated woman, and woman of color to powerful positions. He ratified DOMA.   Part of the uproar of the campaign season was Trumps blatant sexism, his sexualizing of woman, the revelations of his affairs and his unwanted sexual advances on women, and his crude language regarding women.  He also blatantly disrespected his female candidate with coded and not so coded sexist commentary (suggesting she did not have the stamina for the job and calling her a horrible woman -not a horrible person- but a horrible woman.)  It is no surprise that he is picking a male dominated cabinet.  It is worth noting that while we have been able to elect the first African American President we have not been able to elect the first woman President and that this is because White Males voted heavily for Trump.

But the Republican party has been waging a well publicized "war on women"  for a decade now- aggressively going after woman's reproductive rights.   When finding they could not have the votes for a constitutional amendment on abortion, nor pass national bills on it, they found ways through state houses they controlled to pass more and more restrictions on abortion till they could shut abortion clinics down by strangulation.  So of course Roe Vs Wade is on the table again with this new administration.  The Republican controlled Congress has been unwilling for a decade to pass higher minimum wage laws, sick leave laws or maternity leave (all disproportionately effecting women).   So this piece, the rise of sexism, is one of the signs of fascism really kicking in, in a country that has valued equality.

11. Intellectual Bullying

Disdain for intellectuals - Fascist society tends to create an environment of extreme hostility to critical thought in general, and to academics in particular.

Ideologically driven "science" is elevated and lavishly funded, while any expression not in line with the state view is at first ignored, then challenged, then ridiculed and finally stamped out.  Free expression in the arts is attacked.

It is not uncommon for academics to be pressured to attack the work of their insufficiently patriotic peers. Writings are censored; teachers are fired and arrested. Free artistic expression in new works is openly attacked, and existing works deemed unpatriotic are often publicly destroyed.

We have gone from when Newt Gingrich would make an add about global warming with Nancy Pelosi to Newt moving with the rest of the Republican party to the party line of "climate denial".  During the Bush administration government agencies were directed not to use the term global warming in government documents (a form of censorship).  The Koch brothers have funded a lot of "pseudo science" that is basically the available "science against the reality of climate".  The media in its effort to always present both sides has greatly confused the public about this 3% of scientists who do not agree that climate change is man made.  But mostly the talking point for Republicans is "Well I'm not a scientist, but climate naturally goes up and down" which is again to misrepresent and deny science.

In one of the more chilling examples of fascism arrival in the arts, a 24 year old artist Illima Gore, as a political statement created a nude portrait of Trump that showed him a pot bellied and  with a small penis, she first receive hundreds of threats of violence, then death threats and finally a man jumped out of a car and shouted "Trump 2016" and punched her in the eye leaving an intense bruise.

12. Labor Power is suppressed   Because the organized power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.  As these business-government-military interests meld, the significant threat of organized labor is clearly recognized. Labor unions and their support organizations are either co-opted successfully or ruthlessly suppressed and eliminated as soon as possible.

So we have watched the rise of the influence of the Koch brothers use of their money to fund climate denialism and right-wing candidates.   We watched them partner with Scott Walker in WI to break unions, etc.  As ALEC won more and more statehouses they attacked unions in an even more effective way than they had during their attempts to union bust during the Reagan years.   Unions have been on the defensive.  Rather than fighting for progressive change they have spent much of the last decade just trying to survive, fighting endless attempts to cut benefits and wages as the 1% consolidated its power grab during the crash of 2008.

ALEC masterfully framed union defense of public servant pensions as "Privilege that few of us have" in order to turn public opinion against supporting union retirement benefits.  Unions have become increasingly timid about striking for fear of more union busting.

13. Obsession with crime and punishment -

Fascist society is often willing to overlook police abuses and forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. Long jail sentences for clearly political offenses, torture and then assassination are at first uncomfortably tolerated, and then start to pile up to become the norm.

Often a national police force is given virtually unlimited power to snoop through the civilian population. Networks of surveillance and informers are employed, both for actual intelligence gathering and also as a means to keep neighbors and co-workers isolated and mistrustful of each other.

As already mentioned we have accepted  torture and illegal imprisonment by our military against the "enemy:"and a militarized US police force putting down protests, and killing black and brown people in the streets.  It took a Black Lives Matters movement to even make most White Americans aware of police violence that had been going on forever.  We have willingly submitted to invasion of our physical space in airports and to the reading of our cyber communications by various branches of the government.

For the most part the public has turned their back on the long and harsh imprisonment of Chelsea Manning who blew the whistle on military lies, and we have also not paid much attention to the price that Edward Snowden has paid for revealing to us the government surveillance of us.

14. Elections Stolen

Fraudulent elections - In the disordered time as fascists are rising to power, the electoral arena becomes increasingly confusing, corrupted, and manipulated.

There is rising public cynicism and distrust over what are widely believed to be phony elections manipulated by moneyed influence, obvious media bias, smear campaigns, ballot tampering, judicial interference, intimidation, or outright assassination of potential opposition. Fascists in power have been known to use this disorder as the rationale to delay elections indefinitely.

Stolen elections...where to begin?  So we start with the election stolen by Gore who won the popular vote and the electoral college vote came down to a tied Florida and hanging chads.   As the Indigo Girls sing "and we let the Supreme Court appoint a President".   Which given how many begins of fascism started during the George W administration is indeed extremely significant.   Then we have the gutting of the Voting Rights Act (something that Black people had won through blood and arrests in the '60's) by the Republican dominated Supreme Court two years ago.   This was quickly followed by many Republican states passing voting suppression acts while saying they were correcting "voter fraud" that had never been actually found.   When the NC Supreme court voted to strike down their new voter law it found that they had very intentionally and strategically targeted Black communities.  The removal of over 800 polling places nationally (from predominately low income neighborhoods creating 3 hour lines) is another form of voter suppression placing the most burdensome conditions for voting on those with the least free time.

Moneyed influence:  I have already talked about the effect of Citizen's United and Super Pac money on the buying and owning of politicians.   And I have talked about the Koch brothers' money influencing national policies through ALEC and phoney science studies.

"obvious media bias" - the NYT has reported Donald Trump got $2 million dollar worth of free media coverage allowing him to spend way less than other presidential candidates on advertising.   At the same time the media for the first half of the primaries ignored Sanders, then gave him negative coverage and then eventually covered him as a "surprise" challenge to Hillary.

"Smear campaigns" - the public became so weary of this presidential campaign because there was so little content and so much mud slinging.

"ballot tampering, intimidation and judicial interference"  I have already mentioned these.  Thank God we have not yet had assassination of candidates, although it did chill my heart when Trump threatened repeatedly that his opponents should use their gun rights against Hillary and in a national debate threatened to lock her up after he was elected.   I could be wrong but I think that is what dictators normally do, is lock up their opponents.

If you have not already read this article by Greg Pallast on how the election was stolen I strongly recommend it.  It does explain how ALL the polls could have been so wrong.  http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/40246-focus-the-election-was-stolen-heres-how

Also this additional article is now pointing to actual computer hacking of computer voting machines in swing states: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/20/1602092/-HRC-Campaign-Please-challenge-the-vote-in-4-States-as-the-data-says-you-won-NC-PA-WI-FL

So with all this crap here where  is the pony?

There is an opportunity in all this crisis.  If Clinton has been elected (or not had the election stolen from her) we would have continue with the same 2 steps forward one step back, slow and not enough progress on climate and social justice that we experienced under the Obama administration.  It is easy for liberals to feel comfortable under neo-liberalism, to be distracted with other aspects of life and assume or believe that things are basically going "ok".    So while some progress on climate happened under Obama, not nearly enough.   The sense of progress allows us to be the frog slowly boiling as the heat goes up without the awareness to jump out.    Trump is so clearly an assault on every issue that liberals care about that it is now clear in a way it would not otherwise have been that we are a nation in crisis.

As I think more about the rise of hatred and racism that Trump is bringing, and Naomi Klein’s previous words that we will not defeat climate change until we change the oppressive capitalistic nature of our society…I see that under Trump, unlike under Hillary, the only way forward is complete transformation.  I think as people of faith the message Love your Neighbor is present in some form in every faith.   I think it is a message, not directly about climate, but one we will be needing to hold up because not loving our neighbors has allowed the climate crisis to fester and get worse.

Action steps:

* We must speak up, call fascism out and resist when any of these 14 aspects of fascism intensify.

* We must particularly ask attention be put on the issue of election fraud to find out if it is true or not.

*As he begins to violate the constitution we must call for his impeachment.

*We must not forget that the majority of voters did vote against Trump, and those are the number that can stand up to him.

* Whether it is a remaking of the Democratic party as suggested by the Sanders campaign, or the formation of a new third party based upon labor, environmentalists, people of color, and GLBQT we must realize the numbers that voted for Bernie are out there and will only grow under Trump!

*We must also be helping people understand how to construct non-violent campaigns for change.   Americans tend to see change as coming through Congress.   We must release that idea focus on the kind of change that the bus boycotts and the salt marches brought, the kind of change that if fueled by people acting together for justice.   Quakers have a lot of experience with this and we need to be sharing these ideas widely!

Transformation: Trumps or our own?

I live in a very blue state and everyone I know has been in some stage of shock and mourning since Nov 8, 2016.    For those who say: "Why did this happen?" I think there is not one why, but many. As the leaked DNC emails make fairly clear the Democratic establishment worked actively against Bernie Sanders who was very close to Clinton by the end of the primary and if things had not been biased against him at the beginning of the race would have have been the Democratic nominee. Polls all showed him doing better against Trump than Clinton. I think the reasons for this are important to also understanding why Trump won. Clinton is a neo-liberal like her husband. When Trump would talk about how bad things are in this country Clinton would simply respond that this already is a great country. This to a large extend was a denial of all the people who have been hurt by the ascent of the 1% that started under her husband and greatly accelerated after the crash. When Trump would say NAFTA was a disaster that her husband created she would just defend it; she could not admit that it in fact has caused the loss of millions of American jobs. Sanders however was clear about both those things being problems and did not have any integrity scandals like the other two candidates, thus would have fared better.

Democrats in their terror of Trump and determination to get her elected also could not speak openly and honestly about the failures of the Democratic party. Up till the very end there were 9 to 10% undeclared/undecided voters. What we now know is that a lot of people who also poll as disagreeing with him on many issues, and even disliking him, went into the voting place and voted for him. They could not face a pollster and say "I am going to vote for a bigot and a misogynist" - many of them will not tell their families, but that is what they did. And they did it because things have been bad for the working class and now for the middle class, and they wanted to believe his simplistic claims that he would fix it all.

So we have the DNC manipulating the nomination towards the neo-liberal who cannot stand up well against the fascist who spent a year pumping fear and hatred which studies of fascism show create the environment in which scared people turn towards "strong"(dictatorial) leadership. And then there was the vote suppression which was wide spread and racially aimed (over 800 less polling places than 4 years ago - primarily removed from minority communities). If you have not read Greg Palast's article on how Republican's rigged the election I suggest you read this. http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/40246-focus-the-election-was-stolen-heres-how What is most telling in his article is how applying it to just the swing states could bring Trump a victory. Also in reflection, as a therapist, upon the huge amount of projection he did throughout the election I now find his statement "the election is rigged" to be quite the magicians slight of hand. There is indeed a reason why all those polls were wrong.

So that is 4 answers to why did this happen. It is however critical that people keep site of the fact that Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote (by close to 2 million votes). It is only the historic classism of our founding fathers who did not trust a popular vote by the overly emotional "rabble" that caused them to put the electoral college in place in the first place. (Good news I heard on NPR that there is a way to fix this that does not involve a constitutional amendment - impossible to pass under Republican control. An effort known as TheNational Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an agreement among several U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their respective electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote. Once states totaling 270 electoral votes join the compact--which only requires passing state laws-- then the next presidential election will be determined the the popular vote, not the Electoral College.
As of November 9, 2016, ten states and the District of Columbia have signed the compact, totaling 165 electoral votes. So, we are already over 60% of the way there. See here for more information.) But it is critical for us to remember that even with all the vote suppression and de-enrollment that the majority of voters did not want Trump, and to not think badly of our fellow citizen.  It is critical to remember this for the fight ahead, to remember that the things he is pushing are not what the majority of voters wanted. To remember when we go to fight that their are millions who are with us.

What does it mean? Well as is becoming increasingly clear with each cabinet pick he is almost picking the anti-thesis of what a post means in order to fill it, the climate denier to head the EPA, the drill baby drill person to fill the Sect of Interior, a belligerent person to be the Secretary of state, and a racist to be the chief strategist. So the details are not calming and the 100 day agenda and beyond is to tear down all progress on social justice and environmental issues that have happened since the 70's. So at minimum it means there are a lot of things to fight for.

 But more important still is the very real threat of fascism that this presidency represents. In a few days I will post a longer article about fascism, but for now I will simply say that there was a study done years ago based upon studying common factors in Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. The following is a list of the dozen traits they found common to them:
1. Exuberant Nationalism - use of patriotic symbols everywhere.
2. Enemies Identified - the nation cause if unified against enemies "the other".
3. Rights Disappear - as fear as heightened citizens exchange rights for "protection".
4. Secrecy Demanded - Heightened national security, government process more opaque and questioning of authority is discouraged completely.
5. Military Glorified - Military gets disproportionate share of resources - sharp warning to the citizenry as well as other nations.
6. Corporations Shielded - a segment of the business elite play a key role in the rise of a nationalist leader. The marriage of big money and violence is hallmark. At the same time labor unions are destroyed.
7. Corruption Unchecked - rampant cronyism that is unaccountable.
8. Media Controlled - media controlled by governments or big money. Lies repeated enough times become truth.
9. Rampant Sexism - great way to control half the population. Accompanied by homophobia.
10. Intellectual Bullying - disdain for intellectualism and science.
11. Militarized Police - Obsession with Crime and punishment. Police given virtually unlimited power to snoop on population.
12. Elections Stolen - there is rising public cynicism and distrust of the manipulated elections.
 So I will not comment in this post about this list, but make your own fearless inventory of how you see the situation.

So is everything lost?
NO.  There is a long history of populations rising up non-violently to throw off dictators.  Remember the following.  The Danish people  (including their King) wearing yellow stars to protect the Jews in the population, and later doing work strikes, etc.  The Solidarity movement in Poland throwing off communism, the "people power" Filipino movement that brought down Marcos, and the Singing Revolution of the Estonian people in the late 80's bring down their Soviet occupiers, or the "kitchenware" revolution in Iceland after the economic crash of 2008 where people banking pots and pans in the streets demanding a new election eventually won one.   If you do not know these stories I encourage you to start educating yourselves, because they include a variety of very creative tactics to overcome the fear and control of their current government and bring about a change.

An example of getting creative.  Trump wants to cancel US participation in the already inadequate agreements of the Paris 2015 COP Agreements.   Luckily it will take him 4 years to do that, but the more serious problem is if he does not pay the money the US agreed to pay to help the third world countries transition to lower GHG infrastructures.   This is not what most US citizen's want.   So let us take the power back into our hands.   While the amount owed is in the vicinity of 2 billion dollars....when divided by number of citizens....it actually is a very small amount per citizen.   I actually propose crowd funding it.  I know it sounds crazy, but if those who could doubled or multiplied by 10 their donation to make up for those who did not....it is within reach.   And it sends a very powerful message to the international community that common US citizen's do care about climate and it sends another powerful message to the Trump administration that we will not tolerate this climate denial.

Similarly I believe Faith Communities across America need to come together in Love your Neighbor, or a Love Trumps Hate campaign in which white churches partner with churches of color and Muslim mosques and Jewish synagogues to act as their allies and protectors. We are powerful when we stand together and when stand in our core beliefs.

What this is going to take is all concerned members of the public to take up an issue whether it is the protection of the environment, our civil liberties, union rights, internet neutrality, civil rights, etc and be actively engaged with protecting it.  In terms of climate change it was already debateable whether we had a few more years to divert catastrophe or if it was already too late.  But we certainly cannot afford any Trump roll back for both the US and the world.  So at this point the only way out is forward.  The death of both fascism and neo-liberalism would mean we would finally be free to put in place both the social justice as well as the climate policies that we, the majority have been longing for.    

One thing that is for certain is the US will be completely transformed in the next year.  It will either be transformed by Fascism or by a non-violent reclaiming of this country.  So remember we are the 99%.

Organizing from Spirit

I have written a number of posts on this blog about climate organizing.  All of which have been secular organizing.   I have turned over a new leaf and I have begun to organize from leading.  One leading was to get together activist I knew who belonged to churches and have a conversation about what would it look like for the churches to have a powerful moral voice on climate?  We did not have an answer on that but we did decide to organize a conference on Faith and Climate...and 175 people came to that.  Many seeds were plants and many ripples are going out from the event.  It would seem that we will keep organizing as people of faith.

We had as our keynote speaker Jay O'Hara.   I hope as Quakers reading this you all know who Jay is, but my guess is that because of how the mainstream media is that you do not all know who Jay is.   Jay is the Quaker guy from the Lobster boat blockade.  Jay and his co-defendant Ken Ward, piloted a small lobster boat in 2013 in front of a 40,000 lb coal barge to prevent it from delivering its carbon load to the Brayton Point coal plant, the largest coal burning plant in Massachusetts. (Now slated for closure in 2017).   They of course were arrested for this act of holy obedience.  But in one of those openings that only God can create when the Judge decided to allow their defense of the necessity plea  (a legal defense that says you had to break a law to prevent a greater harm...eg break in into a building in order to get someone trapped within.) the prosecuting attorney held a press conference and stated he was dropping all charges because he believed their act was necessary that the government was not doing enough to stop climate change!

So Jay was our keynote speaker.   Jay was great.   He did something I did not think possible in 45 minutes - he explained the heart of Quakerism.  He began with telling the joke about how there is a button in Quakerism that says:  "I am a Quaker.  In case of emergency be silent."  Yes you all know the button.   But the audience laughed and then Jay explained to them that this would not be like what they expected from a keynote speech that there would be silence, but the silence would not be because he forgot what he was saying but because he was listening for what spirit would have him say.   In this very simple way he explained Quaker silence and Quaker ministry.   And so there were many silences filled with a Living Silence.  In this room of 175 people where few were Quaker you could hear a pin drop in the silence and it was a holy silence.  People of other faiths were also listening in that silence.

 Those of you who have ever been in a Covered Meeting (and with any luck it is still the case that all of you have had that experience at least once and I hope more) will understand what I mean when i say a living silence.  I am posting a link here to the talk and I hope you will all make the time to listen to it because the content is wonderful.   Other than the very first silence which the camera man edited out because it was 3 minutes long, all the silences are in there.   But the thing which is so interesting is like me none of you have ever been in a meeting for worship which was recorded.   So know moments of Living Silence have been recorded.   so what I discovered when I listened to it again is that those silences are in there but they are not living silences, they are just silences....because the Living Silence is being in the Presence of God and that is something which cannot be recorded on film - it is quite literally something that lives in that real time moment.

Jay also introduced and explained his elder Erin who was there with him holding him in prayer while he spoke.  While you cannot unfortunately see her in the video many people said how touched they were by this reminder that we are not faithful alone, and that we must hold each other in prayer to do the big things we must do to stop climate change.   Jay and Erin had been in prayer for quite a while in the morning leading up to the talk, and as a result Jay was centered, able to be faithful and to give ministry, to allow the words to come through him like one does in Meeting for Worship when given a message.   This also taught the audience about Quakerism about what we listen for in silence and what comes through.

Jay talked about his own journey from secular activism to faith based activism and explained getting a leading and discernment - two other critical Quaker concepts.  He peppered in some Quaker history, mentioning both George Fox and Margaret Fell.  He called Quakers to return to their roots and he called everyone in the room to find the radical and spirit alive roots of their faith and live it.  People have been telling me ever since how Jay's words, really how The Holy One's words, touched them.  I invite you to listen as well to this message:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXdKCHjekjc&feature=youtu.be

I take Thee...the Radical notion of Quaker Marriage.

Earlier this month two friends of mine who have been together for 35 years married each other.  They have been together longer than any of my friends who are married.  They identify as atheists and anarchists.  Therefore they saw no reason to be spiritually or legally joined.  But as retirement came into view, and one person went over the handlebars of a bicycle and wound up unconscious in the hospital, the idea of being able to share one's social security post death with one's life long partner loomed larger.

When they went to look at the vows that the justice of  the peace would have them say they were distressed by certain verses which felt to them religious in nature.  But primarily they were distressed by the fact that the Judge would marry them to each other.   They both felt that they were marrying each other - that this is not something that another person could do "to" them.  Having known me all their adult lives and having attended my wedding they were both very aware that Quakers are married neither by a Judge or a minister which is what they wanted.   They began a dialogue with the CA Secretary of State about the fact that due to separation of state and church that the vows language could not be legal, nor could the requirement of either a Judge or minister to marry two people.   They pointed to the example of Quakers that the law did allow for an exception to those requirements, but that the exception could not fairly be applied to only one religion.   The Secretary's office wound up agreeing that this probably was not constitutional.  They were issued a license to get married and were allowed to marry each other in their living room with two witnesses.

Most Quakers I know will proudly say that nothing compares to a Quaker wedding.  I have to agree because their is something so beautiful and so democratic about any family or friend being able to speak of love, relationship, marriage, community and good wishes at a Quaker wedding.  There is something so deeply right about the couple rising out of the silence to face each other and to say in vows that have not changed over 300 years "I take thee".  What a joy to have a document hanging in one's home with the signatures of all the loved one who joined and witnessed your wedding!

But most Quakers do not know the actual history of Quaker weddings.  Since Quakers did not have ministers in made complete sense that a wedding would take place inside of a Meeting for Worship and that the intention to marry, already tested and confirmed by a clearness committee was a public witnessing/honoring by the congregation of a connection that was believed already forged by God. Thus Quakers believe a wedding is an acknowledgement of a partnership God has already created. George Fox said: "For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord only, and not the priests' or the magistrates'; for it is God's ordinance and not man's; and therefore Friends cannot consent that they should join them together: for we marry none; it is the Lord's work, and we are but witnesses" Therefore, when the laws of the society said that one had to marry before a preacher or a judge, Quakers saw no need to change their process to comply with marital laws.  They were  already use to going to jail for simply gathering to worship and used to being punished by the state for being faithful to their understanding of God.  They were willing, as in all things, to stand with the Truth as they knew it.

Thus Quakers would marry each other and go on with their lives, unconcerned with whether this was regarded to be legal by the cities they lived in.   But in the small towns and villages dotted across the US that they lived in, they were good neighbors and respected business people whose integrity and sincerity was well known to their fellow citizens.   It did not sit well with their neighbors to consider them "living in sin".   So not through their asking, many states passed "the Quaker exception" where instead of requiring them to be married by a minister, it was recognized that a ceremony witnessed by their congregation would be considered legally binding.  Also many states developed legal precedents of "common law marriage", for any two people who for whatever reason lived together for more than 7 years were considered to be for legal purposes married.  However, in the past decades common law marriages were swept away and domestic partnerships became a legal mechanism that allowed Gay and Lesbian couples, other wise unable to marry to share some of the legal advantages of marriage. In many states if Quakers want to be legally married they still have to go down to the court house and have their marriage officiated there.

My friends recent experience has caused me to reflect and to realize that Quaker Marriage is a case of what Gene Sharp, tactical non-violence expert, calls passive non-compliance.  Where the failure of large numbers of people to comply with a law forces the law to change or become uninforceable.  This is one  of the many ways Quakers radically changed the society around them.  The radical thing was that notion that we marry each other, that we are not married through some other authority figure.  The original radical thing about George Fox's message was that we needed no inter-mediator between ourselves and God - that we could know God directly.   And the radical thing about Quaker marriage is that it also says that we can know directly, discover inwardly God's intention for our lives and that we can live in the authority of that alone.

Discernment...A Quaker Gift for the World

Modern Quakers tend to see clearness committees as for membership and for marriage.  And I have heard some Quakers complain that convinced Friends may see this as more of a rubber stamp function because “of course we want this person to join our Meeting or to get married.”  In a life time of Quakerism I’ve only twice known a clearness committee for marriage to find a couple “not clear” to be married.  In both cases the couple did wind up breaking up, so presumably the clearness committee discerned correctly that the proposed marriage was not rightly ordered.  Done right the clearness committee can ask questions that prompt a deep and meaningful self-reflection.

I would like to argue here that the tool of discernment is one of the greatest gifts Quakerism has to offer the world and should be applied more widely.  So for example here are some of the other uses of a clearness committee I have known people to use a clearness committee for: whether to take a job (especially one that involves moving away or maybe is ethically challenging.), whether to enter a certain profession or change professions, whether one is called to commit holy obedience, or whether one has a leading to work for a social justice cause.  One may also discern whether to leave a marriage, whether to sue someone, whether to “come out”, whether to have a baby and even whether it is time to die!  As you can see the sky is the limit, and think how rich it is to have others to help discern God’s will about such serious and life changing decisions.

Early Friends had Committees of Elders to support members who had been found to be carrying an ongoing ministry.  Their purpose was to make sure they stayed faithful and grounded in their ministry – did not go up in their ego and “outrun their leading.”    Now a days we call these anchor committees.  Some people call them support committees but I’m afraid that secularizes the process and sees it as just “emotional support” – and overlooks the primarily spiritual task of anchoring the person in spirit.

Rightly ordered a clearness committee is not a body to “just listen” or to give advice.  It is to listen in a worshipful way – for each member to try to notice if the person is rightly ordered, to ask questions to try to help clarify, and to reflect what each member understands in the spirit.  Quite profound.

I have an anchor committee now for over 6 months which is helping me discern the right steps for my ministry regarding climate change.   Recently I was at FGC leading a workshop on Quaker practice – I was having to talk about and explain Quaker practice.  Somehow something came together in my head and I realized that many of the non-Quaker activists I knew (some spiritual, some not) were struggling to discern correct steps and some were struggling because they have not discerned and are in the chaos of being pulled hither and yon and everywhere with their concerns for our troubled world.  They do not have Thomas Kelly’s wise words: 

"I dare note urge you to your Cross.  But God, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs.  By inner persuasions God draws us to a few very definite tasks,our tasks, God's burdened heart particularizes His burdens in us....
     In my deepest heart I know that some of us have to face our comfortable, self-oriented lives all over again.  The times are too tragic, God's sorrow is too great, man's night is too dark, the Cross is too glorious for us to live as we have lived, in anything short of holy obedience.  It maybe or it may not mean change in geography, in profession, in wealth, in earthly security."   (Amazingly he was writing this during WWII because it is a timely now as it was then.)   He goes on to say:
     " Little groups of such utterly dedicated souls, knowing one another in Divine Fellowship, must take an irrevocable vow to live in this world yet not of this world, kindle again the embers of faith in the midst of a secular world.  Our churches were meant to be such groups, but now too many of them are dulled and cooled and flooded by the secular.".

So I started explaining just a bit to my activist friends and asking them if they would appreciate some help with discernment.  They were quite interested in the idea and I started having one on one meetings with people and simply asking the question “what are you most passionate about in the work against climate change?”  I listened and asked more questions to help them explore.  What emerged was a wonderful flurry of creative and spirit led activism.  My next move would be to teach a clearness committee structure so they don’t have to be dependent upon me for this.   I thus highly recommend that Quakers start learning how to take the discernment process out into the world.

BLM and Quakers

Last week was a bad week.  Two Black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were murdered by police officers and then an ex-Veteran with mental health issues shot 12 police officers in TX killing 5, and then was killed by an armed drone.  I was at FGC 90 minutes north of St. Paul where one of the murders took place.  Already scheduled before any of this took place, was FGC's plenary speaker: Nekima Levy-Pound, an African American attorney who is one of the leaders of Black Lives Matter in MN.   She in fact came from two days of protesting in front of the MN Governor's mansion to speak to us.

Nekima spoke very powerfully from her heart about her families journey with racism, her own path to becoming an activist and her faith journey.  While her religious language is slightly different from that of Friends she very clearly described being called by God, over and over again being stretched, being asked to find courage and take risks and stepping forward and being faithful, and being protected.  At the end of her talk someone announced that another person had been shot by the police (this turned out not to be true.)   But concerned about that, I went back to my room and did a media search in order to try to find out.

I wound up instead doing something I never do (for people of any race): watching the videos that were posted of the two murders.  I call them murders because when you watch them you quickly become very clearly that these were not people resisting arrest, they are people being killed in cold blood, for being Black and in the wrong place.  After I watched these I wound up watching a press conference by President Obama right after we landed in Warsaw Poland, responding to the news of the second shooting.  (This was before the shooting of police officers in TX.)

His press conference began with very polished prepared remarks which included the statistics about the number of black people stopped by cops 30% more likely than whites, 3x more likely to be searched, the number of arrests 2x higher for Blacks vs Whites, the number of black people prosecuted and convicted, etc.  But a short while into his talk I listened to our normally very articulate President start to speak ex-temporarily and to travel in circles. He was doing this in the way people do when they are trying to find words to express a certain concept, but cannot quite find the right words.  What he is struggling with is both expressing the tragedy of these Black deaths and also wanting to hold up that all Police are not bad and do a hard job on behalf of the community.   He struggles because our society is literally thinking so black and white about this subject that people are just choosing up sides and picking who is good and bad.  He is trying carefully to not take sides or be accused of taking sides.  But he struggles with how to communicate the idea that we are all connected and that there is suffering on both sides.

Then I wound up watching a video by an African American police officer , Nakia Jones,(the only Black woman on the force she serves in Ohio).  The media has reported this as a "very emotional response".   Nakia starts out very calm but does become more emotional in her tone of voice and tearful, but she is also in Quaker terms eldering her fellow police officers.   She speaks directly to white officers and tells them, "we have all taken an oath to serve our communities, to die if necessary to protect them.  I take that seriously, if you are racist and you are serving in a community of color take off your uniform or transfer."  Nakia's offering is very courageous as she will face those same officers in her work place.  There have been false rumors that she was fired, but the Mayor's office confirmed there have been KKK threats since she spoke out.

Prior to all this I have felt that as Quakers, as a primarily white church, that we did not appropriately have something to say about Black Lives Matter.   That it is not white people's place to speak to either what Black people's experience is or what actions they are lead to take.  That much of our attempts to help, while well meaning, reflects an ignorance of the actually history of racism in this country or the experience of Black people.   However, the day after hearing all these messages from Black people about present day racism, I found myself in Meeting for Worship reflecting upon the fact that during the abolition movement Quaker's first moved to get unity in the Society of Friends that the owning of slavery was wrong and to labor with Quaker slave holders to get them to give up owning slaves.  The position taken was that slavery was morally wrong both for the slave and for the owner.   That it was morally corrupting to own a slave.

It occurs to me that we, Quakers do have something to say to white officers about the racism that can consciously or unconscionably drive them to acts of violence around people of color.   I believe that anyone wearing a blue uniform in this country should have to go through a week long training on racism (sexism) and oppression theory.  But also as our national dialogue becomes literally black and white in its exploration of these events I think that the Quaker notion that there is that of God in all people is an important offering to the national dialogue.   I do not mean that to be an "all lives matter" statement that inadvertently dismisses the important effort to elevate out of obscurity and indifference the routine killing of black people.  I mean it to be a statement that confronts racism as a disease that is ripping our country apart and asks us to remember that the disease is destructive on both sides and that the way out of the killing and hurting is for us to join hands in confronting the mindset of racism as one that is an acid that burns everything it touches.

Spiritual Perspective

Just like in photography we can zoom in and have one perspective on something or we can zoom way out and with a little more distance see it as just part of a larger landscape.  I am finding that this is

possible with spiritual perspective as well.  Sometimes when we focus in closely on events that are happening in the world we are overcome by the sadness, the suffering, the cruelty, etc.   But when I can step back into what I have previously described as the "River of God"... a perspective where I see at a distance the bustle of humanity, the cycle of birth, life and death...the multitude of human dramas: car accidents,falling in love, illness, small acts of kindness,evil bosses, parties, marital issues, bonuses, children squabbling, breathtaking beauty, jealousy and competition, art and creation, etc, etc.   When I can see it all swirling in one unending drama that has gone on in slightly different forms and completely unchanged forms from the beginning of human history...I am able to see that even intense suffering, in this minute or da, will pass away again.   I am able to see that even horrific
historic events occurring during this year in our society will also resolve    Photos by Fay Anderson
(for better or worse and the

next series of events will arise and also pass away.)  Even when I feel that climate change potentially carries in it the end of society as we know it, I am able to notice that the Black Plague and the nuclear arms race also felt that way...that we are not the first people to think they faced end times.  This allows me to come to a place that Buddhist teachers talk about as "this too".   It is a sort of seeing the suffering with an open heart, a heart of compassion.   None of this invalidates or makes insignificant that which the close up view can show me, but it allows me to step back, to not be totally caught in that event, or that pain.

Please understand that I cannot always do this.  There are times I am full of adrenaline or righteous indignation, or personal hurt and I am right in that close up shot and full of emotion.  This is a relatively new spiritual development that is not always there.   But I have had a glance of i,t and when I can do it I feel that I have entered the "peace that passes understanding."

This is also not to imply that from this farther out perspective one is able to just say:  "Oh well".   There is a beautiful passage in the bible where Jesus is looking down on Bethlehem from a hill and he sees the condition of mankind, and in the shortest sentence in the Bible it says of God incarnate:  "Jesus wept."    So there is a feeling of both love and compassion.   Even God who has given us free will, is not completely in charge of what happens, but does care about it all.

Amidst all that human drama I described above there is still the possibility at every moment to use the evolving events for spiritual growth, and always the possibility to reach out to God and learn what God has for us to learn, to grow into a more profound relationship with God, and that is an even more profound spiritual shift!

Dancing with Trees

Do you have a tree you know personally?

I remember in grade school being taken on some sort of nature walk with my class where we were out in the woods.   The leader pointed to various trees and told us stories about them as if they were people:  “This one is an old granny who thinks…   This one is a young and willful child who wants to trip people by sticking out its root, etc.”  The she encouraged us to go up and down the path and find a tree that we understood its story.   For the next hour we took each other to various trees and told their stories.

As an adult many of the photos I have taken are of unique trees whose stories I feel.   Here are some examples:

These two trees became lovers young and grew up together and their lives are wound together and infact imbedded in each other.  When one dies the other will as well – they cannot live without each other.

This tree could not withstand the wind storm and finally let go of its hold on life, but it was caught in the arms of this younger tree who holds its mourning, apparently forever. 

       

This tree was touched by human love

This ancestor's life nourishes the next generation.

                                                                                               This off spring is a little "non-traditional".

This tree took what humanity threw at it and worked with it…undaunted.

My Meeting sits at the top of hill with a road that spirals up to the top through a grove of second growth, old growth – we look out the picture window at the beauty and grander of these trees.  Once, during a windstorm, if memory serves me right during Meeting for worship, one of the bigger trees came down…with a rather loud thud.   Someone gave ministry wondering what the other trees thought about this.   I have recently learned about mycelium, the white fibers that come off of roots.  Apparently science is learning that plants and trees communicate in some sort of way with each other through the mycelial path.   So in fact perhaps the trees did mourn for their elder who had died. 

 

Shortly thereafter one of the founding members of our Meeting died.   At the memorial someone recalled the big tree that come down and the ministry that had been given suggesting that the other trees were effected.  They likened this elder of the Meeting’s death to the loss the trees has suffered, changing the whole landscape.   At the time I felt concerned both that there are not enough young Quakers and that it seemed to me that we only had big old trees, no little trees.  Then I walked through the woods and discovered hundreds of little seedlings and was able to notice other 10 year saplings not that tall obscured by the bigger trees.  I realized “oh yes the big ones take up all the attention but the little ones are there quietly growing.”  I was reassured.

The trees of my Meeting

Recently the city told us the water pipes to our building our 50 years old and considered to small and to old and likely to leak and needing to be replaced.   They wanted us to give them eminent domain over a path from the road that would have cut through the property of one of our members who lives on the road and across part of our road.  They were going to cut down trees…about a dozen of these large old trees in order to accomplish this.

The first response of our group was to feel like “we had to”, for the practical reason of not getting a water leak.   But when I gently prodded us to examine this some more – was there no other way?  Were the pipes really at risk or just a “bigger and better” mentality,  was there a different path that would effect less trees, etc.  We began to slow down and ask more questions of the city.  It became clear the city planner who made the plan had never left his office, had just made the plan from a map – did not even know about these woods.  Our member on the street got an arborist to come out.  He told her among other things that it was thousands of dollars worth of trees and would detrimentally affect the woods.  He gave her a little courage to fight and when the Meeting learned she was going to, we said we would stand in unity with her.  So she and the clerk asked the city to come up with some other plan.  They then came up with the  plan of boring through the ground to get the pipe in which will not kill the trees!  (which I suspect will be equal or less than the cost of all that logging.) So the sillium of the woods are communicating their relief to each other.

I wish this were the end of the story, but it is not.  At the bottom of our spiral drive is a lot that a woman who was mentally ill lived in till the end of her life.  She did not care for her home, nor pay her taxes.  So the house needs to be torn down and the city seized it for back taxes last year.  We knew it would be sold and just hoped a developer would not buy it.  Around the time we thought to tell the real estate agent that we would oppose any development that took the trees on the property down…it was too late.   It was sold.   Nothing has happened for quite a while, and it was possible to forget about this.  I had imagined they would leave all the perimeter trees and take down the center of the plot ones to build.  But the member of our Meeting who lives on the street announced last Sunday that she had heard they were coming to cut them down…all of them.  I’m scared that the loss of about 1/6 of the entire woods will be such a shock to the surviving trees as to weaken and damage this whole interwoven forest eco-system.

over 3 centuries ago a philosopher named Descartes made treaties which much of western civilization was built upon, that said things like body and mind were separate, and earth and “man” were separate.  We are now facing a crisis so severe, climate change, that it threatens all life on the planet.  We arrived at this severe place out of just this Descartian error of viewing nature as separate from us: as something to use, to take advantage of, of something we had dominion over, or control over.   We failed to see ourselves as part of it or to understand that what we did to the earth we did to the host body of which we were one cell, one life form within a larger life form.   Regarding trees we have seen them as lumber (an object to use), scenery (something outside ourselves to view), or an obstruction to somewhere we were trying to get or to build and thus something to cut down/remove.  We have not seen them as part of our ecosystem, or as carbon sink protecting our air, or as living forms.  We most certainly have not seen them as personalities like my nature guide did. 

 

This weekend at Quarterly Friends Meeting we were invited in query to ask what if all life (not just humans) had a Light within?  For myself I know it would mean I could not just cut down a tree to suit my own purposes.  I have never understood people who chained themselves to trees and risked arrest to protect them, but I am starting to understand them.  But more profoundly I would have to learn to think about myself as part of network of life with reciprocal life relationships.