Alzheimer's: Speaking in Tongues and Listening in Tongues

Yesterday I went to a memorial service at my Meeting for someone who died of Alzheimer’s.  He is not the first or the last person with dementia my Meeting has said goodbye to or that other Meeting’s I have belonged to have bid farewell to.  It is not uncommon that people with dementia can repeat themselves quite a bit as their disease progresses – both forgetting that they have already said it and also sometimes being hyper focused on certain things.

This friend had three messages that he repeated many times – but in my reflection if one viewed this as a message given in Tongues and we learn to listen in Tongues (or through Spirits eyes) then the messages were of relevance and remained so.   One message he gave a number of times was about his experience volunteering on the local Church Council, and how he delighted in the fact that people came from all different faith’s but cared about the same things.   To me it was an enduring message about ecumenicalism and also taking joy in the volunteer work you do.   He also gave a message explaining why he was called by his middle name not his first name which included some humor about his family of origin.  To me this was a message about knowing who you are and valuing the connection to family.  His final repeat message to us was to count the number of men and women in the room.   He would often point out that he was one of only a few men in the room.  This to me is a very real problem with our aging Society of Friends and was a call to action.   It was interesting to me that even as his cognitive vigor lapsed his sense of belonging to a community and wanting to share with that community did not.

It is important how we hear messages.   Someone could have heard these as an annoying and repetitive message or even as a irrelevant and “demented” message.   But if you listen to it as a message from Spirit than God can use even a demented vessel to deliver a true message.

In a previous Meeting I belonged to a woman rose once a Meeting (and towards the very end sometimes 2x a meeting) and sang Amazing Grace.  It’s a good song, and she was a good singer.  I was never sorry to hear it.  I was glad that she wanted to share with us.

Another man with dementia several times in response to the children entering the room for the last 15 minutes, often loudly and joyfully but disruptively – made the same beautiful comment.   He quoted the Bible where it says we shall enter the Kingdom of God like small children.   It was a powerful and consistent ministry to those in the room who were impatient or annoyed by the children’s noise.  It was reminder that they were God’s children and that God had asked us to be more like them.   Some see the progression into dementia as being one into a “childlike state”….so I took some comfort that as he entered that state that he knew it to be one that enters the Kingdom.

And what about us.  Can we learn to treasure that child like state?  Can we learn to listen for the spirit behind even garbled messages?  Can we learn to see the soul that shines even through a mind that fails?

Black and White Justice (and color of all kind)

What is your personal experience with the criminal justice system?

This was the worship sharing question.  My Meeting is small and there were not a lot of us there.  Everyone sitting in the circle was white. I knew that of the people in the room that I had by far the most personal experience with the criminal justice system.

My experience has many levels and spans 4 states: as a volunteer, as a visitor, an observer of post prison inmate experience, and my own experience as an activist with arrest, detention and courts.  I started at age 20 in college going into the local prison as a volunteer...why?  Because my peer group were all being required to register for the draft for the first time in 11 years and they were taking a stand and saying no, the result of which was that some of them were going to go to prison (and did).  I wanted therefore to understand what prison is. 

Volunteering to be inside:

I was an Alternatives to Violence Project facilitator over a 10 year period of time. 

After my experience as a volunteer in the IN prisons, in Missouri I learned AVP which I did for a year before moving to WA and starting the WA state AVP.  At points I was going in once a month for 3 days straight.  I would spend beautiful summer, spring and fall days in windowless rooms.   I knew men guilty of all variety of crimes and I learned the culture of prison.   I spent hours and hours listening to men describe their experience inside, both beautiful and horrible.  I never asked anybody why they were locked up because it is considered impolite, but often they would tell me, sometimes in great detail.  I knew people doing "short" sentences of a few years, and men doing "life" anything over 13, and I still know men inside who are doing life without the possibility of parole. Vastly disproportionately the men doing life without were Black men.   I listened to men talk about how they did time, how they coped.  I listened to men describe lifestyles so hard on the outside that they said they were grateful they had come to prison because it had saved their life.   And I listened to men hate the place they lived and everyone they could never, never get away from.  I challenged myself to find that of God in each of them and I did.  I made friends and I loved men I knew inside those walls.

Long before there was a book called No New Jim Crow I understood that prisons were a way to both separate men of color from the rest of culture and also permanently bar them from equal opportunities.  It took only one look around any prison room to see that.   In the very white state of WA when the majority of prisoners are people of color the evidence of discrimination is blatantly obvious.  I listened to many men tell me about public defenders so overloaded, incompetent or indifferent that their lawyers seemed unaware of basic facts of their case or in some case even of their names.

I met guards who seemed far more cruel and heartless than the "criminals" they were watching and I also met guards well liked by the prisoners who managed to be kind to everyone.  Mainly I saw the incredible boredom of the guards and understood why the prisoners would say "they are doing time too without doing the crime."  It also became clear to me how the power tripping and cruelty were simply how some of them entertained themselves or felt important in the very small pond that was their world.  Not dissimilar to the power struggles that went on among the prisoners.

As the administrator of our program, I also spent a lot of time talking to the prison administration and dealing with rules and attempts to get reasonable accommodations for the program.  I eventually lobbied the legislature to try to change some of the most egregious things about the prison system.  I learned to not try to meet the rules of the prison with logic because they were not based upon logic but upon layers of history, egos, and power tripping - they were arbitrary and inconsistent and sanity was only to be had when you could accept that.

Visiting injustice

I eventually stopped being a volunteer and became a visitor and then endured the even more disrespectful ways the friends and family of prisoners would be treated. Metal detectors and pat searches and time wasted waiting because they had not even called the person you went to visit.  The covert message always being there must be something very wrong with you and worthy only of contempt if you cared about someone in prison.  The truth frequently being communicated that they had all the power and you had none and don't forget it.

The Post Prison “set up”

I also watched many, many men I knew come out...and 90% of the time fail.   They failed because they were set up.   The ones who had done the longest had been deprived for so long of the ability to make even the simplest of choices: what they would eat, or when they would sleep, or what products they would want to use....that having to decide all these things on the outside was overwhelming.  Street culture is so different than prison culture that they were lost.  In addition, after years of being penalized if they objected or asserted themselves, they struggled in society to have a voice, to set boundaries or to ask for things.   Those who came out without family were really sunk - released with only some clothes, no job, and money in a check form (but no id and thus no easy way to cash their check) they were easily ready to become homeless or steal something.   After years of not having consistent access to drugs and alcohol and now maximally stressed, many would very quickly be back to addictions within weeks or months.

Activism and arrest and trial

And all of the above...this does not begin to address my own receiving end of the criminal justice system.  As a political activist I have twice committed civil disobedience, so I have twice gotten arrested, been handcuffed and taken down to the station and on one occasion stayed refusing to give my name in solidarity with others in my group not giving their name.   So I have spent time both before and after sentencing in jail.   I have been to court for both arraignment, trial and sentencing.  Having spent so much time with people who desperately tried not to get arrested I am painfully aware of the privilege involved in choosing to risk arrest.  I also am supremely annoyed by activists who spend some hours or days in jail (jail being completely different from prison) and then think they know about incarceration.  I would like to say clearly that what I know about imprisonment is lightly impressed by my personal experience and heavily influenced by the sharing of literally hundreds of inmates.   And listening to something is not the same as living something.

Courts and the criminal injustice system 

I have been in more courtrooms than I can now count for trials of fellow activists - some of whom were facing decade long sentences for Plowshares actions ("We shall beat our swords into plowshares" the inspiration for personal acts of disarmament against nuclear weapons in the 80's)  and more recently for trials of activists acting against our fossil fuel system.   

In these disgraceful experiences I have learned that in some ritual of authority all must rise for the judge or risk contempt charges or being barred from the room.  I have learned that the judge can limit what evidence and lines of defense people are allowed to offer to the point of preventing their defense.  I learned that jury instructions can be given in such a way that the jury is virtually told they must ignore their conscience and only interpret the law as the judge interprets the law to them - essentially saying that they must find them guilty.   I have watched juries come to quick decisions so they can home that night.  I have watched jurors be selected and dismissed on the basis of their believing anything that might bring actual justice to bare.  (ie anyone who does not believe in the death penalty is dismissed from capitol cases.)  In short I have learned that there is not much justice in our criminal "justice system."

The Color Gap

So my experience is with jails, with prisons, with courtrooms, with arrests, with police who were arresting people around me, with guards, with prison administrators, prison rules, parole boards, etc.  I want to be very, very clear.  That is a lot of experience for a white person – but it is only a glimpse of what people of color go through.  I chose my experience which is in itself an act of privilege.  I don’t have to fear that for a broken tail light I will have an interface with the criminal justice system that could become deadly.  I observed people of color being treated differently by cops and guards, but I did not have that experience.   And the only reason why my story is worth telling is for what I next have to say.

With all of the experience I have listed imagine the jolt to my system to hear my fellow Friends around the circle say, sometimes apologetically, that their only experience with the criminal justice system was with being stopped (treated respectfully and then let go) by a police officer.  These are all Friends who I love and have good, good hearts....and suddenly in one shattering moment I understood how really wide the divide actually is between white people and people of color in this country.   For all the things I have written about above...are the common experience of people of color.   It is hard because of the discriminatory arrest, prosecution and imprisonment practices in the US for there to be a person of color who does not have a family member, friend or self who has not had the experiences I describe above.   The fact that white people on the other hand can live their whole lives without having experiences with the criminal justice system and generally not know anyone either who has had a personal experience...that is a cavernous gap which separates us.

I am still trying to wrap my head around how that gap can be bridged.  It is not going to be tours of jail ...that just does not begin to be three dimensional.   Frankly, it takes time genuinely spent, and sadly I don't think most white people I know would see the benefit of spending that time.  And so, we sit in camps with life experiences so different that we don't even begin to comprehend how different the experiences actually are.

Benjamin Lay and Quaker Corporate Witness

I often hear Friends lament that we do not have a corporate witness currently, or try to figure out in consternation how to marshal other Friends to unify around one of the many critical and compelling issues of our time.  I think that Friends fail to understand the actual chapters of Quaker's historic witness.  For example, Friends proudly speak of the standard of Quakers "not owning slaves".   They sweep past the over 100 years it took our Yearly Meetings to reach consensus that Friends were not to own slavery (or that even after that some Friends did).   This ignores the great price of unpopularity and even expulsion that the early abolitionist experienced in their own Meetings.   It also ignores that this later standard was achieved by "reading Friends out of Meeting".  (Meaning that Slave owners were stripped of membership.)  Given that Friends have now rejected the idea of reading anyone out of membership, it would literally be impossible for modern Friends to achieve this level of conformity to any position we might take on any issue.

Take for example the biography of Benjamin Lay:  The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Redikar released this past month.  Redikar reports on the tactics of Benjamin, a small man known as a hunchback because of his 4 foot height and curvature of the upper back.   In 1738 he became the last of a very few Quakers expelled for their abolitionism.  In fact Redikar tells us Lay was expelled from two British Friends Meetings as well as Abington Friends meeting in the US. Below he describes the incident that led to Lay's expulsion: 

"On September 19, 1738, a man named Benjamin Lay strode into a Quaker meetinghouse in Burlington, New Jersey, for the biggest event of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. He wore a great coat, which hid a military uniform and a sword. Beneath his coat Lay carried a hollowed-out book with a secret compartment, into which he had tucked a tied-off animal bladder filled with bright red pokeberry juice. Because Quakers had no formal minister or church ceremony, people spoke as the spirit moved them. Lay, a Quaker himself, waited his turn.

He finally rose to address this gathering of 'weighty Quakers.' Many Friends in Pennsylvania and New Jersey had grown rich on Atlantic commerce, and many bought human property. To them Lay announced in a booming voice that God Almighty respects all peoples equally, rich and poor, men and women, white and black alike. He said that slave keeping was the greatest sin in the world and asked, How can a people who profess the golden rule keep slaves? He then threw off his great coat, revealing the military garb, the book and the blade.

A murmur filled the hall as the prophet thundered his judgment: “Thus shall God shed the blood of those persons who enslave their fellow creatures.” He pulled out the sword, raised the book above his head, and plunged the sword through it. People gasped as the red liquid gushed down his arm; women swooned. To the shock of all, he spattered “blood” on the slave keepers. He prophesied a dark, violent future: Quakers who failed to heed the prophet’s call must expect physical, moral and spiritual death.

The room exploded into chaos, but Lay stood quiet and still, 'like a statue,' a witness remarked. Several Quakers quickly surrounded the armed soldier of God and carried him from the building. He did not resist. He had made his point.  This spectacular performance was one moment of guerrilla theater among many in Lay’s life."

Now if you consider this carefully my guess is these are not tactics you could see yourself doing in your Friends Meeting or for that matter any Friends Meeting.   Yet there are many recorded incidents of him doing guerrilla theater among Friends, as well as "calling out" Friends (from the bench during business meeting) in a way that could only be described honestly as self-righteous heckling.  So maybe you say: "well no wonder he was expelled - poor social skills, really very rude....other polite Friends could have gotten the same job done."   Yet both John Woolman and Lucretia Mott made themselves very unpopular among many Friends for their calls to conscience. Lucretia Mott was almost written out of her Meeting several times, probably only spared this because of the wealth and status of her husband.  George Fox for that matter in the beginning of Quakerism entered other people's churches, stood up on the benches and disrupted the service and called the minister hypocritics, among other things.  So playing nice was not in the original Quaker play book.  Speaking the truth bluntly was.  As Quakers have through education and the protection of the right to freedom of religion become more middle class have we also learned the middle class pattern of playing it safe?

I believe if we honestly appraise our history we will see that a few Friends with vision and courage put out a call to Friends to stand for social justice.  There calls were not immediately heeded or was unity quickly or easily reached.  Most spent their lifetimes both inside and outside of the Society of Friends agitating for a vision of justice that was often many decades ahead of their time and took great flack in both arenas for their "eccentric position".  They often did not see the fruits of their labor before their death.  In fact Redikar tells us Lay was living in a cave towards the end of his life in poor health and a Friend came to tell him that the Yearly Meeting had just passed a minute to discipline and disown Quaker slave owners and he jumped up saying: "I can now die in peace."

It does apparently take a certain personality type to be dedicated to the truth above popularity or even security.   That kind of personality is it seems at times flamboyant or "rude" or aggressive and self-righteous in making its point.  As Redikar says about Lay: "His confrontational methods made people talk: about him, his ideas, the nature of Quakerism and Christianity, and, most of all, slavery."   One has to think that Lay, Woolman and Mott did not have the idea that speaking to that of God in another person means to speak gently so as to not offend.  Perhaps the confrontation with oppression will always offend the ways in which oppression has dressed itself up and justified itself.  We have also been taught that minority voices in business meeting are to be listened to because they may in fact carry a piece of the truth not visible to the rest of us.  Can we believe this even when a Friend's voice makes us uncomfortable and challenges our own choices?  Are we willing to have a called Meeting for Business to respond to a crisis rather than send all our concerns off to a lengthy many month process before action can be taken?

Thus for us to wish in the present that we would all be in unity around social concerns is to ignore the actual history of how we have come to be in unity.  There were always Friends dragging the rest of us forward.  Even once we came to unity in consensus,  the work was always done by a small minority of the Meeting.   It is not insignificant that we have a value set that asks people to listen to God's voice, that teaches the rest of us to validate and support those among us who are so led.  It did make a difference that activist Friends were (usually) eventually supported by their Meetings.   But it is a great myth to say Friends acted as one body or in one mind for these great social causes.   It is true that heeding God's call we were out front ahead of much of the rest of the population.

This leads me to ask:  Who is a Friendly nuisance in your Meeting?   How well are you listening and heeding that person's words?   What truth do you care about so deeply that you would stand on a public bench making a spectacle of yourself?  What are you not willing to risk and why?  Are you willing to offend the oppressive?  Are you willing to upset and offend others by unequivocally stating a truth that challenges the very basis of who they are and how they live?

For more on Benjamin Lay see: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/quaker-comet-greatest-abolitionist-never-heard-180964401/
or: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opinion/sunday/youll-never-be-as-radical-as-this-18th-century-quaker-dwarf.html

A portrait of Benjamin Lay

Taking Down Racism

Amidst Nazi's openly marching in the USA in 2017 there has also been a record number of Confederate statues coming down this past month.   All kinds of opinions have been expressed about this.  Some people say "what's the fuss?  It's just our history.  Leave them because we cannot deny our history".   Others have called for the removal of even more statues as symbols of racism and hatred. Various people have focused with intensity upon the fact that most were not put up immediately after the war, but much later as a way to glorify white supremacy.   People have pointed out that Robert E. Lee himself said he wanted no statues of himself and thought we should not have Confederate statutes as it would impede the healing of the nation.  Others have written articles calling Lee a traitor.   In this beautifully written piece by African American writer Lisa Richardson, she points out that for many African Americans these white confederate soldiers are their ancestors as well...and suggests the statues be moved to museums.

This national dialogue about the statues, has been accompanied by a certain amount of not very skillful rehashing of the civil war.   Some declare it was a war fought to end slavery (and that confederate soldiers fought to defend slavery.)  Others argue it was a war over states rights, or over  regional domination.   I cringed at the article that called Robert E Lee a traitor for this is exactly the problem with this whole approach.  Generally speaking many white southerners have ancestors that fought in the war, and as Lisa Richardson above points out, so too do many African American southerners. People don't want to think of their ancestors as bad people doing evil things.  So it is exactly this kind of attitude that then drives people to defend the statues.

I have yet to see anyone say the war was a national tragedy that occurred because of our failure as a nation to come to grips with the deeply imbedded racism upon which are nations was founded.  When you total the number all of the causalities on both sides 750,000 Americans died in the civil war - a number that equals the deaths, of WWII,  WWI and the Vietnam war, the next 3 largest war casualties.  Literally families and neighbors fought and killed each other. During the war 420 died each day, a reality that haunted President Lincoln. And this wartime figure, which does not begin to take into account the carnage, slow maiming, suffering and humiliation of 246 years of slavery or the countless genocide of the people native to this country by white "settlers".

People have pointed out that Germany has no war statues glorifying the Nazi's that fought in WWII. Michael Moore has pointed out in his movie "The Next Place To Invade" (which is not a movie about war) that the Germans educate their children about the full truth of what happened in WWII and have made public apologies to Israel and the worldwide Jewish population for the Holocaust that took place during WWII.   We have yet to reach a point where we can have history books in our schools that tell the truth about the massive crimes against people of color upon which this country is built.   So when people say "it is our history"  I would say "yes it is, but it is our unexamined and undigested history."   Why do we have more statues of confederate soldiers than of yankee soldiers?  It does not make sense to deny the loss and suffering of the South who lost their sons and fathers, as if the similar loss of the North is all that matters.  And yet as a Nation we have yet to publicly mourn the suffering and grinding deaths of slavery.

Recently I was at an event where people talked about the important role of rituals the Jewish people practice in order to remember their losses and their suffering - keeping memories alive and maintaining a sense of joy in the face of tremendous oppression across centuries.   It made me begin to think about the importance it does play in society what we memorialize and how.  A friend of mine wrote this post about her trip to Budapest where they were figuring out how to recycle the statues that were left from the legacy of Soviet domination.  As she shares the statues were scrambled together sideways, backward, in a jumble so they no longer were reverent - they were a park to play upon, and to remember.    And as Barb adds in an after comment, they were kept behind a gate that locked at night, no flashpoint for demonstrations and counter demonstrations.  In the Ukraine a statue of Stalin was left standing but is now surrounded by new monuments commemorating his many victims.

I have also been reminded of how some veterans objected to the Vietnam War Memorial on the DC Mall. They felt its message too grimly spoke to death and not the comradeship and heroism of those who served.   So rather than the monument being torn down they added to it a statue of 3 soldiers together. Likewise many museums are having to rethink the commentary they have along side of Native American artifacts, and artifacts of slavery, etc to tell more honestly these stories.   Recently I visited the park that marks the end of the journey of Lewis and Clark.   They acknowledged by name the tribe whose land Lewis and Clark claimed.  This is a small baby step of beginning to tell the story of the dispossession of Native tribes.  

So as we contemplate what to do with these statues to me the far more important question to be asking is how do we begin to commemorate publicly the death and destruction in all directions that the institutional and unexamined racism of the US has caused?   How do we begin to mourn the losses and the destruction?   How do we begin to tell that the unresolved issues of the Civil War lead to the death and suffering of  Reconstruction, of Jim Crow, of the poverty in northern city slums and to the police violence against people of color everyday right now? How can the pieces of these statues be joined by new pieces that as a montage begin to tell the truth about racism in the US?

I, like many many white Americans, have ancestors who fought in the Confederate Army.  I have no need to try to lionize their actions of which I feel only mortified.   But I also have no need to vilify them.  I realize some of them died painfully.  I realize some fought for things they did not believe in.   I believe many fought as in any other war ever because they were conscripted, and they felt no other choice.   And I do not kid myself that some were hateful people who tortured their slaves and fought to protect their "property" rights.   And for me all of this, the whole way of life it represents, is part of the tragedy of institutional racism in many eras - that it is "normalized" to the point that people do not see its moral bankruptcy and feel called to defend it.

If we tear down these statues -as if a symbol can represent the attitudes that created them- we will still fail to do the real work of confronting racism.   I find it far more challenging and valuable to ask how can we create new monuments, in part out of the pieces of old, that will more accurately tell the story of racism in America?  What do we tell?  How do we explain it?  What would be a narrative that includes all of us?

The Transformative Power of Love in the Face of Hate.

It has been a bad month for hate.  A man was driving in circles in a state park destroying the plant life.  Two Native American teenage boys in the state I live in called out to him to stop, and he ran them over while making stereotypical whooping noises. The media failed to report it correctly as a hate crime but called it "a dispute" between two parties.  One boy died. The tribe was particularly upset by the press misrepresenting what had happened.

In Portland two people died from stopping a person who was bullying two teenage Muslim girls in head coverings on the public train system.  One of the men as he lay bleeding to death told a supporter who was holding him: "Tell everyone on the train I love them".    I can only hope that after a fatal brutal attack I could still be focused on love!   Several weeks later without protectors a 16 year old Muslim girl was attacked and killed in VA.

After Fox news targeted the progressive school of Evergreen University in Olympia WA, White Supremacist groups came onto campus to protest and violence broke out between them and counter protesters.  An "anti-Shira Law" group (ie anti-Muslim group) not getting a permit to protest in Portland came up to Seattle where they were given a permit to protest.   A counter protest was held a half mile away (an effective way to show the Muslim community they had support) However, that group decided to march to where the Anti-Shari group was (a strategy which holds no merit I can see and simply raised the risk of a violent outbreak).  The Pretty Boys (as they self named themselves) chose to walk through the counter demonstrators gathering causing peace keepers to work hard to part the crowd so they could pass.  They then took punches at the crowd with the apparent intention of provoking a fight.   They did this in full view of the police who did nothing.  When the peacekeepers asked the police why they did nothing they said:  "If you are going to let them walk through your group, there is nothing we can do."  The result being that many counter demonstrators were assaulted by the Pretty Boys.  In terms of spiritual practices that I understand when you focus on violence you magnify it.   When you counter anger or hatred with anger and hatred you increase the anger and hatred.  King demonstrated to us that it takes training, grounding, preparation and love to face hatred and violence in a transformation way.

Most upsetting has been the police shooting Sunday in Seattle of an African American woman in her home after she had called the police after a break in.  She was shot dead in front of her three children because she got upset and picked up a kitchen knife.  She joins a long list of African Americans shot dead by the police across this country for the apparent crime of "being black" and freaking the officers out because of said blackness.

I have focused here on the hate violence that has happened in my part of the country - the NW (while noting the death of a Muslim girl in VA for contrast to what happened in Portland).  There has been similar violence throughout this country.   I also am not talking here about the numerous suicide bombings, and mass shootings and terrorist acts that have happened world wide.  (Although to be clear here - any mass act of violence against people simply because of who they are is a terrorist act.)
This national violence, I and many others, place at the feet of Donald Trump.   His hate speech and encouragement of acts of violence by his supporters at his speeches, his frequent display of contempt, disrespect, put downs and stereotypical descriptions of those he disagrees with has given a permission for hate and violence that has not been present in this society for decades.   I'm not so confused as to think that prejudice and racism had gone away - but they had become unpopular and disrespected ways to behave.  There have been numerous reports of people acting out sexism and/ or racism and saying things to the effect of "if the President can do it, I can do it."  Or simply saying Trumps name as they act.  And Trump has not condemned these acts after they took place.

I must confess my greatest fears about climate change have been how scarcity and fear might drive people to violence against each other.  I never dreamed someone would simply sprinkle a generous helping of hate on top of the difficulties we already have.  Although I guess if I had really thought about it I would have realized that throughout history dictators have used fear to control and direct the masses. By creating external enemies, or scapegoated groups they turn attention away from real problems and create a false sense of unity.  It is actually the oldest move in the play book.

So what about us?  What about those of us who don't want to live in a land of hate?  Those of us who want to live by Kingian principals of nonviolence that include staying centered in a spirit of Love?  A few weeks ago I woke up from a dream.  In the dream I left somewhere I had been and I came out and there was a group of people moving slowly in a coordinated fashion side ways across a hill, at times they would retreat in apparent fear, at other times inching forward.  But always progressing forward with determination despite something they clearly found scary.  I did not know what was happening, but I felt drawn to them and fell in with them to see what was happening.   They inched up towards a large building with big picture windows and glass doors and through it I could see some type of uniformed officers and also a group of teachers inside what I realized was a school building.  The teachers were some standing and some sitting in chairs but joined to each other by holding hands in unity.   The officers where walking rapidly up and down the line in a menacing way, clearly saying things to them, and randomly slapping or hitting various teachers on the head.  Despite this scary behavior the teachers were holding their ground.  And as the onlookers watched this a chant slowly came up:  Love,... Love,... Love,.. Love,... Love....  It was being made in solidarity with the teachers, it exposed the crowd and they knew it, and it sent an energy that was pure and disarming.

I awoke from the dream with a feeling of happiness, peace, and hope.   Hope that I have not felt for a while.  I felt clear that I want to be with the people who are chanting love in the face of hate and violence.  How about you?

Recently a friend of mine who is a librarian at a community college discovered that the campus security were planning a day of practicing a violent assault on campus.  They intended to use fake rifles with real loud sounds and actors with fake blood etc.   My friend was incensed by the idea of the campus being used for this sort of "military practice" and mindful that increased glorification of militarism is one of the signs of fascism.   She also believe guns have no place on campuses every by anyone.  Never having done anything of this sort in her life she crafted a dear colleague letter.  She feared only her friend would sign it.  In the end 63 faculty signed the letter.  The training exercise still went forward.  There was no time to organize the singing of "Love, love, love".   But she asked her friend if he could imagine doing that.   Yes he said I could imagine that. .....Maybe next year.

When will we next be confronted by anger, hate and violence?  Will you be prepared to sing?  To bring love not hate to meet hate?

NonViolence Applied

On May 8th I was arrested...on purpose, committing civil disobedience. At least 4 years ago I had, along eventually with 100,000 Americans signed the Pledge of Resistance, stating we could commit civil disobedience to send a forceful message to then President Obama to not approve the XL pipeline.  As we all know it was a very bumpy road with Obama, at times he looked on the verge of approving it and we would be all geared up, and then another delay would happen.  Eventually he did refuse to approve it, and we celebrated and the Pledge was laid down.   But of course Trump has tried to undo almost everything good Obama did, and to turn the hands of time back on things like coal that are beyond reviving.  So a call went out again for the Pledge to be revived.

The XL pipeline would move such a massive amount of oil, and the Tar Sands are the dirties oil with a much worse GHG load, that Jim Hansen has called it "Game Over for the Planet".  It is for this reason that 350.org and a coalition of national climate groups made it a target of their opposition and the focus on it ignited a movement to oppose fossil fuel projects, and Bill McKibben's famous "Do the Math" tour which brought powerfully to America's attention that not only do we have to stay below 350 parts per million to have a liveable planet (currently breaking 420...yikes) but that we have a "carbon budget" ....an amount we cannot burn, or we will never be able to keep the planet cool enough to support life.   Scientists say that at our current rate of burning it we have 4 years left before we pass that point.   So climate activists are pretty intense right now about trying to stop things like the pipeline.   To the uniformed Trumps attempt to "approve it" would seem like he has just ended the game for all of us.   However, the pipeline does not have project level funding.   And this is where the civil disobedience comes in.  The movement has targeted the banks with the hope of putting enough pressure on them to stop them from making these loans.   It is a good strategy because if they don't loan the money the pipeline will again be dead.

In Feb and April of this year, Bernard Lafayette of Civil Rights era fame, has been in Seattle and lead two trainings on non-violence (which I have previously written about.)   Hearing Bernard talk about the difference between non-violence with a hypen and nonviolence without a hype, as the difference between "not violent" and something far more complex and spirit based, really helped me put words onto something I have been struggling to articulate to the local movement for a long time.

Our Faith Action Climate Team, here is Seattle, planned how we wanted to go about our action. Mindful of the 6 points of nonviolence (listed again in that previous post) we committed to conduct ourselves from a peaceful spirit so our actions aligned with that spirit.  We met up on the day of our action and sang and prayed to ground ourselves.  We went over to the Chase bank (largest potential funder of the XL pipeline) and spent an hour sharing prayers, silence and song.

I was able to talk to the bank manager at length trying consciously to speak to that of God in  him. Our conversation was respectful.  I did not make him the enemy, I treated him as the person who would carry the message to higher levels of the bank that the people where rising up and would remove their accounts and hound the bank if they continued this plan to fund.  He told me he was sympathetic and agreed to communicate that message.  I was able to communicate to him that 4 of our group had accounts at Chase and would return another day to close them and that if Chase persisted they would just lose more and more public support.  He acknowledged that they already had lost accounts for this reason, and they knew that. He also told me that if we did not leave he would be forced to call the police.  I told him I understood that but that we were staying as long as spirit told us too. Outside the bank other supporters fliered the passers by and sang and prayed for the success of those inside.   Throughout our two hours there the customers came in and did their business and left. They were not interfered with by us nor felt threatened by our energy, they were not our target. But they were curious about our message, and they each left clear why we were there.

The police liaison, a Mennonite, also spoke to that of God in the police.  By the time the police arrived the bank manager was telling the police liaison that most of the bank employees agreed with us.  The police from the minute they walked in and found people sitting in a circle on the floor in the bank praying, did not want to arrest us.  They repeatedly tried to encourage us to go outside and protest outside saying they did not want to arrest us.  Eventually the Lieutenant in charge stated repeatedly that he was "begging us" to go outside and kept going away and leaving us to "think about it" in the hopes we would leave.  Eventually, I looked at him and said:  "I know you don't want to arrest us, and we have decided to stay, so I am sorry for you."  At that point he knew that he really would have to arrest us, and they did proceed to do so.  However, they also wound up releasing us without booking or ticketing us.

My co-defendant said in the holding cell that she felt sort of badly about making him have to arrest us.   I said: "No, there is nothing to feel bad about.  Everyone of us will have to face the ways in which we are complicit with climate change, and if he had to face how he is sometimes enforcing laws that keep the oppressive system in place and support climate change, and if that is what the bank manager has to face, his role in a bank that is making it happen...then that is actually the power of nonviolence to bring moral pressure to bear for social change."  This is important since people sometime ask me what good getting arrested actually does.

Friend George Lakey, author of Strategy for a Living Revolution, a classic work on nonviolence who was here speaking in Nov and then also in April, urges the movement over and over again to be strategic.  He says that he does not see much point in random marches or one off actions.  He wants to build campaigns that have clear goals.  Nonviolence researcher Erica Chenoweth also points out that successful movements use a variety of techniques.  They don't just do one thing over and over again.   For the most part American's response to Trump has been a lot of marching and lobbying. Marching has it's place as a beginning movement building stage.  So for example a lot of people came out for the first time ever to march in women's march and to the degree that their names got captured and they got hooked up to Communities Rising (the off shoot of the women's march) then the march served a purpose.  In a normal politician it would have also created some fear and the desire to pivot to protect popularity.  But on a narcissist this is completely lost.   So when we do marches we have to ask: Who is the target?  Is it to build coalition? Is to pressure certain key people? It needs to not be because we are mad and want to stomp around.  Because frankly that is not much different than small children tantruming.

The expression of anger by protesters is a seductive thing indeed.  We are mad about the injustices that are happening, and we have good reason to be mad!  However, who are we targetting and who are we effecting and to what outcome?   So for example, over decades various movements have felt moved to sit down in street intersections or to walk onto highways and shut down traffic.   There are times were what is happening in our whole society is so well known and outrageous (an escalation of the Vietnam war, or the shooting of a black man in the back by police) that this sort of "no business as usual" response is clear and powerful.   But too often it is actually an expression of the protesters sense of power that they can stop traffic.  It is a sort of waving a fist at the sky.  It leaves many people in buses and cars with schedules messed up and lives inconvenienced and leaves them angry and feeling disrespected.  (One must consider - someone is going to pick up a child from daycare, someone is going to a surgery, someone is going to an airport, or a job interview.  Is the fact that the President is doing something horrible or that climate change threatens them too, really a reason to cause them these problems?)  When we piss them off do we build a movement?  Is it strategic to have this effect on them?  Contrast this to when completely nonviolent protesters were maced by the police at Occupy or Black Lives matter.  In these cases the nonviolent behavior met with oppressive violence garnered public sympathy because if made more clear the oppression that is at work to keep our system in place.

When we say that we are targeting Chase bank as the primary funders of the XL pipeline that is a goal, but then the question has to be: how will we move them?  Is it again a feel powerful thing to "shut them down"?   What will actually move the bank management to decide that funding the XL pipeline is a bad idea.  I am not so naive to think that people calmly explaining it to them will accomplish this because those at the highest levels are so profit driven that it seems clear that they have not been considering human welfare for a long time.   But given that they are profit driven then things which threaten their brand and their profit do speak to them.  So protests of all kinds (not just those that shut them down) threaten their good reputation.  Do they lose business or profit from being shut down?   No not really.   This is the case if you block an oil or coal train, but with a bank people just deposit in a machine or the next day.  (And are again angry about being inconvenienced.)  People closing their accounts and telling them clearly why is what impacts their business.  Negative media attention affects their brand.  A wide spread event, closing many branches certainly creates a media event.  But unless their is a long term campaign plan, unless Chase has to worry that disruptions and negative attention will continue - they can easily weather one bad day.

Let us consider for a moment the psychology of stakeholder power holders like bank executive or politicians.  Like most humans when told they are bad or challenged in their actions the first reaction is to dig in and to justify to self and other, ones own actions.  When someone is identified as a villain they respond to this sort of polarization by seeing the other as the enemy.  What Martin Luther King showed us so powerfully is that when you treat an opponent with respect but with a firm demand it both confuses them and troubles their conscience, it leads them to self reflection and self questioning (with the few exceptions of those without conscience - who still must be supported by many other people to stay in power and those folks do have consciences.)  So they start by defending themselves, if things stay polarized they stay defended.  However, if they are challenged but on vilified there is room for them to start reexamining their position.  There is room for them to consider compromises or shifts.   There is also room as public opinion shifts against them and change becomes inevitable for them to find face saving ways to embrace the change they have to rather than to go to more violence or keep behaving in more and more morally repugnant ways to protect their position.   Like Aikido their energy is met and redirected in the direction of a more peaceful outcome.

Erica Chenoweth in her studies of non-violence tells us that when violence occurs within a nonviolent movement that movement can succeed despite, but not because of the violence.   In other words they must work to recover from the damage to their image that the violence creates.   Thus another indicator of how important pure nonviolence is.   Historically, it is also true that some movement followers impatient that success has not already been won begin to advocate property damage and or outright violence.   Movements have split over such disagreements.  So it is important as a movement that we know the history of nonviolent movements and that we carefully prepare the ground works in our movement for a spirit that supports nonviolence over simply non-violence.  Erica has also identified that movements succeed by using a variety of strategies and techniques, not by relying to heavily on one method which will lead to loss of momentum over time.  Additionally she tells us campaigns take about 5 to 7 years to succeed, so we have to have the faith, patience and determination to persevere.

So as a nonviolent movement to stop climate change, we must teach nonviolence which is not well understood in the American population. We must teach how to be non-violent not just in our actions but in our spirits.
We must choose our targets strategically and learn how to identify power holders and to make detailed strategies for how our pressure will work (Not simply say we will apply pressure).  We must be able to articulate a plan that uses different techniques and escalates pressure over time and how we think the tactics will be effective. We must think about how we interface with the public and do so in ways that engage them and bring them with us rather than alienate them.   We must learn how to activate our own centers of hope, love, courage, creativity and fun as we create these actions.  And we must with our eyes on a clear vision of where we are going dig in for the long haul!

Holding a Vision

Most people I know are very glum about the multitude of terrible things that Donald Trump is doing to our country.   With good reason!  And I have heard many activists sort of trying to figure out how to even sort out priorities in a time this dark with so many things going wrong at once.  It is quite critical that as People of Faith that we listen for leadings and inner promptings of the Spirit and be faithful to those.   As my favorite quote from Thomas Kelly says we are not called to die on every cross but called to our particular task.   This is even more important to be clear about in times of crisis or we become scattered and unfocused and thus also unfaithful.

"I dare not 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 particularizing God's burdens in us.  God gives us the royal blindness of faith, and the seeing eye of the sensitized soul, and the grace of unflinching obedience.  Then we see that nothing matters, and that everything matters, aand this my task matters for me and for my fellow human and for Eternity. ....

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, our night is too dark, the Cross is too glorious for us to live as we have lived, in anything short of holy obedience.  It may or it may not mean change in geography, in profession, in wealth, in earthly security.....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."
Thomas Kelly The Testament of Devotion 1941

So I urge you to be clear about what the Divine Author has tenderized your heart to and be faithful to acting on that now because the threat the Trump Administration places upon American Democracy and the world as a whole is indeed grave.

If you have read my previous posts about the research on the 14 signs of fascism, then by logical extension the types of activities that will protect democracy from fascism are ones that: protect freedom of press, speech, and assembly.  Activities that lesson fear (deglorify the military and patriotism) , and promote feelings of tolerance, the embrace of differences and diversity and the inter-connectedness of all peoples - especially calling out sexism, homophobia, anti-semeticism or xenophobia when it is promoted .  Actions that call corporations and big money interests to accountability and challenge corruption and cronyism and other unethical behaviors at they appear. The protection of intellectual rigor, education, labor, and science as they come under attack. Strenuous objection, challenging, and resistance to police violence, state violence (like torture or assassinations), or the invasion of privacy and the increase of surveillance of the general population. And the protection of voting rights and fair elections and other civil liberties.  These are the actions which are protective of democracy.

I would also hold out to you that while keeping a careful eye on the incursions against our freedoms and the destruction of various departments of the US government that it is also important to keep a vision of what we want.  It can become too easy to become so focused on the destruction that one can no longer remember what you want.   I would also say as a silver lining that some of what we had was "good enough" but not actually what we want.  The ACA is a good example.   It insured many more  people than before and yet fell far short of universal coverage and by keeping the insurance companies enshrined in the heart of it, it kept it really expensive.   Maybe the attempts to destroy it could actually lead, if we keep a vision of single-payer health care, to just that.  Bernie Sanders is holding up that vision by offering a bill to that affect.

What are the other things we really want?  George Lakey recently reminded me that William Penn founded PA as part of the "holy experiment"...that this holding of vision for God's kingdom is in the DNA of Quakers.  All through the bible the prophets are people who give voice to vision and call others forward.  George also points out that the left has not done a very good job of promoting vision for decades.   He is reading at each bookstore he talks at on his book tour the Black Lives Matters recently released vision statement.   What is your Vision?  We won't get there folks without one.

With my Mind Stayed on NonViolence

Last weekend I went to a training on NonViolence by Bernard Lafayette and his wife, Kate, and Mary Lou Finley.  Bernard founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) when he was 20 and he was part of Dr. King's inner circle.  He is now 77, and still fighting for justice.

My reaction to the training was to feel like I was in a familiar place because as a birthright Friend I have literally been raised with the 6 principles of Nonviolence that Bernard shared with us.  In fact at one point when he named the influences on King's development of his own philosophy of nonviolence he mentioned "the historic Peace Churches" and then listed them out.  Dr. Lafayette also was one of the creators of the original Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshop at Greenhaven Prison in NYC.   So my many years of involvement in AVP also made the principals of nonviolence that he shared with us very familiar:

1. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.
It is a positive force confronting the forces of injustice, and utilizes the righteous indignation and the spiritual, emotional, and intellectual capabilities of people as the vital force for change and reconciliation.
2. The Beloved Community is the framework for the future.
The nonviolent concept is an overall effort to achieve a reconciled world by raising the level of relationships among people to a height where justice prevails and persons attain their full human potential.
3. Attack forces of evil, not person doing evil.
The nonviolence approach helps one analyze the fundamental conditions, policies and practices of the conflict rather than reaction to one's opponents or their personalities.
4. Accept suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal.
Self-chosen suffering is redemptive and helps the movement grown in a spiritual as well as a humanitarian dimension. The moral authority of voluntary suffering for a goal communicates the concern to one's own friends and community as well as to the opponent.
5.  Avoid internal violence of the spirit as well as external physical violence.
The nonviolent attitude permeates all aspects of the campaign.  It provides mirror type reflection of the reality of the condition to one's opponent and the community at large. Specific activities must be designed to help maintain a high level of spirit and morale during a nonviolent campaign.
6.  The universe is on the side of justice.
Truth is universal and human society and each human being is oriented to the just sense of order of the universe.  The fundamental values in all the world's great religions include the concept that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice.  For the nonviolent practitioner, nonviolence introduces a new moral context in which nonviolence is both the means and the ends.

I realized among other things that having been raised in Chicago where various civil rights leaders from Dr. Lafayette to Jesse Jackson spent time, and also having spent time on the eastcoast in Boston and DC. I was exposed to peace and social justice activists who were deeply steeped in these attitudes so they were normative to me when I moved out to Seattle.  They are not typical attitudes in Seattle whose Wobbly past leans a bit more towards a Sal Alinsky approach that very much identifies opponents as enemies and directs anger at the opponent, often making a person the enemy.   This has also been a painful part of doing peace and social justice work in Seattle for me.  The 5th principal itself comes into things like do you chant angry chants or do you sing songs of hope and determination?  Principal 3 comes in for me to questions of how you pick the targets of protests and the focus of campaigns.

Since history is written by the victors for the most part the history of nonviolence has been obscured or rewritten.  It is way beyond the "white washing" of Martin Luther King's quite radical legacy.   I seriously during the debates around non-violence at Occupy Seattle had to endure people saying (and meaning it) that nonviolence had never been successful in history except in freeing India and sort of in the civil rights movement.  This is an ignorance of the dozen's and dozen's of successful nonviolent government change overs that have happened just since WWII and the fact that those are escalating. If you are not familiar with the research of Erica Chenoweth on the efficacy of nonviolence I encourage you to visit her blog https://rationalinsurgent.com/.  Dr. Lafayette did a wonderful job of telling us stories from his many decades of experience with active engagement in non-violence: from Selma, to Wounded Knee to being Kidnapped in Columbia.  I will write more about this in another post.  But I am left wondering why there are not camera crews following around Dr. Lafayette, Dr. Lawson and Rev Jessie Jackson while they are still alive, before this amazing oral history is lost forever.

Dr. Lafayette explained that the civil rights movement distinguished between "non-violence" (the absence of violence which can lead to passive peace) and nonviolence which is the whole significant "technology" that is represented by Kingian nonviolence as described in the 6 principles above and this he said leads to "active peace" a peace that includes social justice.  For me this was a helpful light into why I am often in the room with people who ascribe to non-violence as a tactic and yet know that we are actually not talking about the same thing.  I know I want to live and act from the true Spirit of nonviolence.  While we sang at the end,  sang: "Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on Freedom."  I saw that the words stuck in my head were "with my mind stayed on Nonviolence"!

Now we are in the Soup

Recently a friend told me the following significant truth about butterflies.  She said:  We tend to think that caterpillars crawl in their cocoons and then their little caterpillar eye’s turn into butterfly eyes and their little caterpillar necks turn into butterfly necks and they sprout some wings and then they are ready to go.  But that is not actually what happens.   What actually happens is that some butterfly DNA, called imaginal cells begin to emerge.  As they begin to emerge the caterpillars immune system kills them.   However, that is not enough to deter the butterfly to be.   The imaginal cells keep emerging at a rate that they cannot all be killed and they begin to recognize each other, and to bond together, and finally when there is still not that many the immune system is overwhelmed and gives up trying to kill them.   At that point he caterpillar body dissolves into a “nutrient soup”, a sort of gooey substance that is used as the raw material for building the new butterfly following the DNA map of the imaginal cells.

I suspect most of you know where I am going with this but for those of you who wonder why my Quaker Blog is suddenly talking about butterflies: I think the current situation in our country is the chrysalis for a new society  (either that are we have simply dissolved into a terrible mess!)   I think Donald is attempting to transform our previous country and I think our previous country was already dissolving in so many ways from so many problems.   I think that some of us have been holding a vision for a long time of a new society, one based in justice, equity and love.   Those of us carrying that vision are the imaginal cells.   As it appears to some that the country is descending into chaos or anarchy with record size demonstrations, and spontaneous airport demonstrations supported by spontaneous taxi strikes, and when government officials are resigning, disobeying and opening covert twitter accounts to still communicate the truth to the public…we are in the nutrient soup.   There are some days that simply seem like everything is being attacked and coming apart, and other days when there is feignt glimmer of what might be emerging.  But we can see the different movements rising up, noticing each other, sometimes banding together, sometimes simply gaining inspiration or encouragement from each other.

We are far from the end of this.  Some “cells” will be killed by the defending system of the old paradigm.  People have already been fired, black people have already been shot in the streets for a long time now, a woman at Standing Rock has lost most of her arm, and a man the sight in one eye, I pray none will die there, but it is possible.  The abrupt unplanned demolition of the Affordable Care Act may in fact lead to people’s death without health care, even as I write this activists are on trial for turning off the flow of tar Sands oil from Canada to the US, etc, etc.  But it is very, very important that we not become confused in the darkness and the struggle that it is the end rather than holding the vision of a butterfly becoming.

Which that would mean that first as a Society of Friends that has long held up its testimonies as the Truth as we currently know it, that it is really important that we give voice and witness to that future that we believe possible.   It is important that we continue to voice crazy ideas like “Ok if you are going to do away with ACA and you want everyone to have health care…then time for a single payer system.”   Or “Ok you want the greatest country on earth, then time for alternative energy so we can have cheap energy for business”.   Etc, etc.    it is also really important that we are able to articulate to our fellow activists, often full of despair from Trumps attempted roll backs, what non-violent revolution or social change really looks like.  (I highly recommend the reading of Towards a Living Revolution by George Lakey, or any of the things that Gene Sharp wrote.)  If you don't like the nutrient soup and are scared it is a failed butterfly, I encourage you to work harder for the New Society coming.  It is important that even as things appear to be desinigrating that we have Faith in the emergence of a butterfly.  In many ways this is like the Faith in resurrection at a moment that looked like the Savior God sent was dead.

I also think that part of what it means to be the imaginal cells is that as members of the Society of Friends we hold memories of struggles past that the general public has little or no memory or understanding of: for the vote for women, the civil rights struggle, the Anti-Vietnam War struggle, the anti-nuclear struggle, etc .  We must hold up the Light that explains how the struggle for change works, how it proceeds and how it succeeds!    It is not enough to simply say NO we don’t want a caterpillar, or NO we don’t want this goopy mess at our feet.   That cry NO does not create a butterfly.  Our jobs as imaginal cells is to be able to describe a sustainable earth, and a just society.   Not only to describe them but to do so in a way that is compelling and helps organize all available life forms towards that end!  And interestingly for me (see previous posts) butterfly's have always been a sign of the presence of God.  So maybe as we create this New Society we can also move closer to God.