To Lay it Down

 In the Quaker lexicon is the phrase "to lay it down".   Sometimes we talk about laying down a committee.  Other times we talk about laying down a leading.  Very occasionally we talk about laying down a whole Meeting.  This language is different than the secular notion of ending or terminating a committee or a position, because with all things Quaker it implies that there is discernment and faithfulness involved.   The idea is that that The Holy One both leads us into or gives life to a thing and will in due time lead us out of, or allow for the death of a thing.   As written about in a previous post, we are not to "out run" a leading, to stay at something beyond the time that the Creator intends for us to carry out this activity.  The idea here is that both the beginning and the end are Divinely determined - not just driven by one's own thinking, will or ego.

How then might one discern to lay something down?  If the thing no longer has life or vitality this might be regarded as a sign.   If a new leading or a new direction has arisen to supersede the old path. Sometimes a thing begins to feel heavy and a burden.  Sometimes it seems as if the path forward has nothing but obstacles and difficulties and is "no longer open". Friends sometimes speak of a "door closing" and that when one door closes another may open.

One of the most famous stories about laying something down is the apocryphal story of William Penn speaking to George Fox.  In this story William Penn was, as was the way of men of title wearing a sword.  But he was troubled by this as he sensed it did not fit the Quaker testimony on nonviolence, and so he asks George Fox if he should still be wearing his sword.   Fox is said to have replied: "Wear thoust sword as long as thoust can."  Meaning it is up to you, your conscience will guide you.  This I think speaks loudly about a Quaker sensibility that a time will come when a thing will come clear and nothing else will be possible.

I think Friends would be well served to examine carefully our committee structure and to see if some committees are perhaps ready to be laid down, to not simply assume that because we have already had such a committee for a long time, because it is "traditional" to have that committee that it is still rightly ordered to proceed with it.   Many a Friends Meeting as it shrank in size has struggled to keep and fill all its committees when it would have been better served to pare down the number of committees so there more energy and vitality on each committee.   The sense of stress and over stretchedness maybe in deed a sign of something ready to be laid down.

I once witnessed the nominating committee of the Yearly Meeting come and report that they recommended that they be laid down because they had struggled mightly to fill many committee positions and had not been able to do so.  They felt they had been faithful in their work but that the way was closed and they wished to name it as so.  The crisis this caused on the floor of the yearly meeting led to an ad hoc committee being formed on the spot to address the situation and many Friends stepping forward to fill unfilled positions.   By their faithfulness the energy was shifted and a new way forward was found.   This was profound faithfulness, that ego would not have allowed for.  It points to a profound truth about laying something down: it takes courage.

Quakers are greying terribly, the average age is now in the 70's.  Many Meetings are shrinking terribly and are struggling to have enough members to pay the upkeep of the building.  The truth is...we are now facing, as are many churches all across America, that many of our Meetings will need to be laid down in the next decade.   How can Friends discern to lay down a Meeting?  How could it serve a greater good?  Here are some queries that occur to me:

When is the ownership of a building a burden rather than a support to a worshipping body?

Is our worship still vital with this number?

Are there circumstances we can forsee that might grow this Meeting again?

What other good works could be done with the Building? - as tenants or as recipients of a gift?

If we sold our building what other good works could we empower with the money?

Does it feel energizing or deadening to consider releasing our building?

How would my life be different if I did not attend this Meeting?

Pastoral Care

 For over 300 years Friends have had Ministry and Oversight committees or just Oversight or just Pastoral Care, or Care and Concerns.  Recently Friends have begun to shed the term oversight for its cultural insensitivity.   Really the purpose of the committee however named is to do pastoral care.  But what does that mean in a setting where we have no pastor?  It would seem it means how do we care for each other?

Pastoral Care committees (or substitute other name your Meeting uses) traditionally handle membership applications, weddings, clearness committees of all kinds, the creation of the annual state of the meeting report, etc.  Since the AIDs crisis brought the death and dying of many members who often did not have close family, Meeting has also created Care committees for those in poor health or in some stage of dying and those are typically managed by the Pastoral Care committee (or in some very large Meetings by a seperate Care Committee that manages the care committees.)  Many other churches do have the casserole brigade that brings food in the case of a death or illness....mostly in my experience we don't do this so well.

But what kind of care do we need?  It has been my observation that many older friends are fiercely self sufficient and while willing to help others would be mortified at receiving "help" from others.  This stands in contradiction to the reports from folks who have served on care committees that talk about it being deeply meaningful, and being spiritually enriched by the opportunity to give.   Are we willing to give the gift of receiving?

I also note that our original pastoral care practices were developed when Friends lived and farmed in the same community, often having many other daily paths of intersection: as neighbors, business owners/patrons, mid-wife, social relations, etc.  So they knew if someone was sick or dying, they knew if someone suffered a financial loss, or lost a job or suffered in various ways.  Now Friends are often spread out, seeing each other only on Sunday and mostly in silence.    How then do we learn of each others spiritual and physical needs?   Some meetings do some version of sharing joys and concerns (that may happen once a month or weekly).   Some meeting take prayer requests (which only some are brave enough to participate in) and some meetings have worship sharing with some kind of frequency which may fill in some details about people's lives...but for the most part we are often in the dark about each others needs which is why we struggle to do pastoral care well.

Recently a F/friend of mine who belongs to two Meetings broke her foot and was in a foot cast and confined to her house with orders to walk as little as possible for two weeks.   She later confided to me that no one from either Meeting had reached out to her or asked what she might need.  This is what I mean about how do we do Pastoral Care?  In other churches the pastor might have checked in on her.

Years ago a member of the Meeting I then belonged to who was a very active member, clerk of various committees over the years, weekly attender, etc began to report her mother was dying.  She was absent flying across the country to be with her mother several times.   We said prayers for her and waited for her return to give her hugs and sympathy. Her mother died.   But she did not return.   We thought she was taking time to grieve.  After about 3 months Pastoral Care called, to discover that she was mad, quite angry with us.   No one had called her during that time, Pastoral care had called once, and she had received no cards or emails.   She felt abandoned and uncared for by her spiritual community and had begun to question what kind of community was it really?   

For me it raised many questions about our assumption that we would do all our pastoral care when we see each other.   What does it mean to be in a spiritual community?

Perfectly Unfinished

 We all live unfinished lives.   With the exception of an older man I know who had recently updated his will, paid all his bills on a certain day and went out for a run, came back feeling “tired” and lay down and never got up again…all of leave a lot of things undone.  A client of mine’s father was a hoarder and when went to a nursing home her siblings and her had to hire a squad of workers with a truck to spend two weeks basically excavating the house and taking everything to the dumb.  (A task made harder by the fact that there were a few valuable objects and documents mixed into the mess.)   My best friends mother, mad after her husbands Aunt died leaving them excuators of her estate in another state (without asking) and the years it took them to handle everything, was determined to not leave this sort of burden to her kids.   Unfortunately, her husband who declined into dementia did not have the capacity to do the same.  So for years after his death she sorted boxes and got rid of things and organized and gave things away.   And yet after her death it took her daughter a good six months to separate out the items for family members and get them to them, have Salvation army take other things, and yes sort….the boxes and boxes of photos before putting the Condo on the market, and there will still be paperwork for another year.  I think somewhere between the man who died at the end of bill day and the hoarder, there is a balance that represents living but being thoughtful of those who will clean up behind us.  (I have to say all three of these people died as they lived.)

There are no finished lives.   A friend of mine is dying in a hospital right now. (post note she died 10/26/21).  She is essentially without family.  There will be no one to clear the stuff out of her apartment.  The landlord will be left to get a squad to haul everything out, and that is with a month unpaid rent as well.  She also had established no medical power of attorney which made things very difficult after she got in the hospital.  Those she was most close to were not allowed updates on her medical status and had to beg the doctors to hear the relevant information we had about her health condition.  The law defaults to next of kin, meaning the hospital found and called a sister she had not spoken to in years and asked her to make final decisions about medical care for my friend.   Reader, if you don’t have a medical power attorney established, stop pretending you will never die and get the paper work done!  We are all after all in a pandemic.

There are no perfect lives.   A client of mine has struggled for years with a sort of perfectionism that keeps her stuck.  Afraid to choose anything for fear of making a wrong choice, or passing up a right choice she remains firmly affixed to the fence unable to make choices that would move her forward.  She is a potter and recently as we worked on the perfectionism in the rest of her life she had the insight that in pottery she knows she had to be experimental or she would do nothing.  That it is all “practice” and that sometimes she likes the piece enough to keep it and others are composted and she begins again.   She realized she has to live life this way.   That she has to be able to be experimental, make mistakes and start again. She said: “Nothing is perfect.  Nothing is done.  Safely never finished”.   It is true there is safety in being unfinished because if we had to live our lives with everything just so, everything ready to be in its final state. …we could not live.

Live a perfectly unfinished life.   I have told me daughter that when I die the box of college papers I could not part with, the file drawers of old campaigns I worked on and finacial papers, and old journals can go straight to recycle.  I have shown her where the one file is that has important legal paper work in it and where all the passwords to my computer stuff can be found.  I have told her to take what possessions of mine she wants and give away or dispose of the rest.  But I hope that whatever laundry is undone, dishes undone, projects or paperwork, that the expression of love, and the acts of kindness and the fight for justice has been done in a perfectly unfinished way!  I hope that I will feel that over all I have spent the hours of my life on the things that matter most.  

Living with Uncertainty and other teachings of Corona

 Our country is getting more and more polarized over the Coronavirus.  I was amused when Donald Trump's press secretary first spoke of alternative facts.  What an oxymoron.  But now like living into a science fiction movie, there are people on both sides of the divide furious with the other side for doing what they regard to be life threatening or life worth living threatening behaviors. There is no way for them to even discuss the "facts" of the issue because they have different news sources and literally different facts.  In my clinical practice I listen to families that are being torn apart by these differences, and literally to people moving to other states, so they can either live where people are vaccinated, or live where they do not have to wear masks.

My last blog about the virus I said "well clearly Corona is not done teaching us.  We are still being held still in order to learn."  But I was getting pretty tired and board myself with that.   It was easy to just feel like "I wish those other people would hurry up and learn so we can get out of purgatory."  That is never a good position when you stop noticing what you might need to be learning.

Recently while talking to one of my clients - I noticed that all of us, both sides are grasping desperately for certainty, for normalcy.  One side grasp for an end through vaccination and herd immunity, the other grasps to maintain a freedom of choice and the normalcy that comes with that.  It occurred to me that through out time humans have looked for and made up explanations for the scary and unexplained thing in their time.  Ancient people explained earthquakes, volcanoes and hurricanes as the God's were angry with the people.  A previous generation believed the earth was flat because that was what they could see and the idea it was round felt like we could "fall off".  In a pandemic gone by people not knowing about germs and how they spread believed that whole towns fell ill because witches communed with the Devil.  There is a long list of things that without understanding the science, people made up explanations for.   Actually part of how our brains are literally wired is to fill in missing pieces of info to make sense.  If you print a word without a vowel most people will substitute it and not even know they did.

We don't want uncertainty.  It is uncomfortable; it feels scary.  We feel better with an explanation even if it is as horrible as one of our neighbors is a witch who has turned the whole town over to the Devil.

What arises for me out of this - especially if Corona is here as our spiritual teacher, is how do we learn to live with uncertainty?   It seems to me it requires quite a bit of faith, a belief in a Supreme being who is weighing in for good.  It means learning how to live inside the Serenity prayer.  It means having to surrender the desire for certainty and big T truths.  It means embracing the mystical which is the unknown and trusting being on a journey.  It means not turning away from the suffering which is part of the unknown experience we are having.  It means having to learn to respond with compassion and find hope from within.

Love, Lover, Beloved

 I have a friend who is Sufi.   She tells me that Sufi's frequently talk about God as Love, Lover and Beloved.   This is interesting to me.  Certainly Christianity talks about God as a force of Love, and certainly a sense of Beloved.  But the idea of God as Lover seemed new.

In my 20's I grappled with questions of "what Gender is God?" and tried on what was the experience of tuning into Goddess.  While this did seem to tap into slightly different aspects of the Divine, in the end I came down on the feeling that the Divine is genderless or as we would say now nonbinary.  During that time I was working out what to call God.  In a particular episode I heard the words of the Cris  Williamson song: Song of the Soul.   This is a song which had played in the background of my life without my putting particular attention on it.   So I would hear this part:

Love of my life
I am crying
I am not dying
I am dancing
Dancing along in the madness
There is no sadness
Only a song of the soul

And we'll sing this song
Why don't you sing along?

and in my minds eye I thought it was a song about a human lover:  "love of my life"   But suddenly one day as I listened more closely I caught the first line:

Open mine eyes
That I may see
Glimpses of truth
Thou hast for me
Open mine eyes
Illumine me
Spirit divine

and I could finally see that this was a song about Spirit Divine - but also about God as Lover, as Partner, and in a dramatic turn then all of the names I had played with as the right name for "God" played in my head to the beautiful melody of this song, Song of the Soul, profoundly making the point that all of them are names for God.

So as my Sufi friend tells me that they think of God as Lover, I realize this does open a new energy for me around the Holy One.  Many of the Christian descriptions of God are of a parental God or "Lord" a sort of powerful ruler.  While Jesus calls god Aba, there is not God as Mother (Only Mother Mary) and there is certainly not words or frames for god as partner, friend or lover.  This is a kind of intimacy that Christianity does not suggest.  It is however an exciting set of possibilities.  It suggests a more tender approach from God, and a much closer in relationship - not a God that is "in the Sky" or otherwise far away but one that is right there at ones side.  And put next to the word Beloved, it also suggests a sort of reciprocal loving and adoration.  I think I will be living into this idea for a while.

Your Services are no Longer Needed

 Recently I spoke to a f/Friend of mine who I had not seen in over a year.  She is in her later 70's and she has been clerk of our midsized meeting for the last 12 years.  But recently the nominating committee told her that "because she is so busy that they wanted her to have a break" by which they meant that they were not renewing her nomination as clerk.  They offered her no other role either.

There are several things wrong with this picture.  One is that she was allowed to serve for 12 years as clerk to begin with.  That reflects either poor nominating practice or an absence of other leadership and a too convenient reliance on those who will continue serving.  It makes sense that if other leaders finally came along or someone finally named the bad practice of over reliance on some Friends that they finally addressed it.  But what else is wrong with this picture is how it was addressed.  Friends, it is not Quaker plain speech to project onto someone, to tell them they are too busy, when they themselves have not made that complaint.  (Yes she had complained about busyness in a way that each of us do when pressed for time....but not in the way that we do when we state I have too much on my plate.  I need relief.)  It seems fundamentally inappropriate to decide for someone that they are too busy.   It might be a very good question to ask.   Or in the case of people who really do try to do too much and do it poorly it wound be Quaker honesty to say "We see that when you are doing, x, y, z and A and B that you are making mistakes.  We are having trouble with some of the mistakes.  We feel like this won't work unless you are willing to release some things which things are you willing to release.  And to involve the person in solving how things will become manageable again.  The final thing wrong is that her position was taken away without giving her any other role which seems to imply that she suddenly has no value or role to play in her beloved Meeting.

When Friends have served long terms because of unusual circumstances where nothing else is possible it should be established clearly by the nominating committee:  "we normally only have two 2 year terms for clerk.  Because the incoming clerk's partner was diagnosed with cancer we are asking you to do one more term.  We regret having to over extend your term and we will replace you at the end of this term."  The nominating committee, the person in question and the Meeting should avoid idea that there is any position that only one person can do.  That is pride and incorrect.   Someone with no experience will do it differently and perhaps less well but this maybe divinely ordered growth on their part, or a much needed chance for the Meeting to experience change.  But if someone has been needed in an extra term it is good to have it set up with the expectation that the term will end so it can be celebrated when it ends!   Leadership is always an act of love and sweat and we need to celebrate each other for what we give to our Meetings.  When a nominating committee if being indirect and not genuine in their communication about end of term, the person is left to wonder did they screw up, did people not see their labor, and ultimately where they unappreciated which certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  I strongly suspect that they were so worried about hurting her feelings by telling her they did not want her to be clerk any more that they made up this story they were taking care of her.   The thing is they were not so it actually did hurt her feelings because she was left to wonder all the question above and if she had done something wrong.  

This is one of the many reasons why it is good Quaker practice to have terms for committee service (even if different for some positions) and to have a limit on how many consecutive terms a person can serve.   Our Meetings have many positions so certainly a person has other places to serve.  It is thinking too narrowly about any/all of us to think we have only one or even two places we can well serve the Meeting.  It is possible to set up situations where people who have not served on a committee come on under someone's leadership and learn by serving with them and then leader rotates off and the newer member is ready to step up.  This is also good practice to create the conditions to grow leadership.  

But what, I can hear someone saying, if there really is not enough people to serve?   Well that is a crisis best faced rather than papered over by having some people lead forever.  It both burns out people and it creates a failure to face the cross roads the group is at.  I recall one year at my Yearly Meeting the nominating committee came to the session and reported that after a whole year of "begging" people to serve and still having 17 unfilled positions they were laying themselves down and asking the Yearly Meeting to face the real issue - that we had a committee structure too big for who we now were.  I thought it an inspired move.  (The sitting clerk handled it very badly.)  If we name that we don't have enough people then it does give us the opportunity to look at how do we need to simplify and at what point do we even have to lay a Meeting down/

Simultaneous to this my F/friend is also a founding member of a Quaker organization for whom she has played many leadership roles over decades.  In that situation, it has sometimes been the case that her involvement made others feel they could not match her enthusiasm or commitment, so hang back from really fully engaging themselves. Being aware of that, and the fact that she will not live forever, she has herself tried to step back again, so there is space for others to learn rules and take leadership.  But when someone who had agreed to be clerk of that organization abruptly withdrew they turned back to my f/Friend and asked her to step back in, only to later rather abruptly remove her when they felt they had found a replacement.  It seems to me that this again fails to see her as a person rather than a needed function or skill set.  

This is where the nominating committee needs to sit down in a very honest conversation with her about what does succession and right use of her gifts look like?   To say (which she knows but as if the person does not) "You have played an essential role in this organization.  We would be no where if but for you....and you will not live forever.  How can you help us plan for the time when you will no longer be here?   What do you see needs to be passed on and how?  What role do you want to play as those shoes are filled?"(There is a reason why there are "emertis" roles in institutions.  They are a chance to retain institutional knowledge and wisdom while it is still here with us.)   It is also I think incumbent on a group like this to find a way to publicly celebrate the role of a founder and not just let them diminish away.  Or worse yet have things taken away from them one by one "your services no longer needed" until they feel a pariah to their own organization.

No ones service should become an institution.  No one is irreplaceable.  On the other hand no one who has served their Quaker Meeting or institution should feel like they are used and thrown away, a disposable in a throw away culture.  Our culture needs to be one that celebrates people and has a right place for everyone and knows how to celebrate gifts given.

 

Pagan Quaker

 Recently in my worship group I gave a message about how in novel about stopping climate change the author imagines them creating a new religion which will save the earth but jokes it is really an old religion Paganism.  It is about loving the earth.   

To my surprise after that about 4 other messages were given (in our already quite small group) about people never believing in the "Old white bearded dude in the sky, but in Mother Earth", about talking to trees, or being able to center in nature and find spirit there.   Later we did a worship sharing with the simple query How is nature spiritual for you?  I noted for me that the bigness of nature; the ocean, the mountain, the forest, all have this majesty and eternal quality to them that brings me back to the Divine Mother.  Others spoke about the beauty as the thing that brought them in harmony.  The second query was how can we come more deeply into relationship with the earth?   Many of us acknowledged that this one is harder to answer.   So much has been done by existing paradigms to seperate us from the earth.  We have so many blind spots.   But it seems important.  In fact critical at this moment on earth.

The person who created the queries notes that she had looked in Faith and Practice and also at Quaker Earth Care Witness queries.  But she had not been able to find ones she liked.  She had not been able to find them because the ones she found still had a sort of how can we care for or have stewardship over the earth.  She sensed that it is still a separateness paradigm or worse yet a human over earth view point.  She could not find queries that acknowledged the inherent spiritualness of the earth or asked us to be "in relationship" with the earth as Native spirituality so clearly does, or as the science of eco systems does.

What would it mean to be a Quaker Pagan?  To come back into relationship with the earth - to sit under the silence of a tree and hear its message?

                                    Crescent Lake, WA

The Love or Fear Epiphany

 I have long walked with an "evolutionary question".  This is a concept from the book the Celestine Prophecy and is a spiritual question that you are working on.   Mine has been:  "How to bring God/spirit into shatter false dualities that keep us from serving higher purpose/creating a true justice."  I moved two years ago to a Meeting already in a deeply polarized situation.   I felt initially that my evolutionary question gave me some Light to work with.   That by not taking a side (despite others who sought to assign me a side) that I could stay out of the polarization and operate as a bridge between the sides.  Ultimately this failed miserably, and I instead simply earned the ire of both sides.  Initially this was just too profoundly confusing in regards to my evolutionary question, and I simply stopped thinking about it.

However, recently I was having a spiritual conversation with a friend and the evolutionary question came up so I told her mine.  In so doing my attention went back on it and I realized again that I had not reconciled my question with what had happened.  As I renewed my reflections on this I remembered what another Friend had written about this: They wrote that we can be in a state of Love or a state of Fear (but not both) and that it seemed to them that the Meeting had operated in fear, and that we had not stopped to see "What can Love do?"  Their words seemed very true to me.

This is when the epiphany happened.  Evolutionary questions are suppose to weave together all the strands of your spiritual inquiry and growth.   Yet I have had a separate very significant spiritual truth in my life which is that when I get in a state of fear then I forget God, and have to travel some period before some self reflection reveals to me that I am in a state of fear and again disconnected and then I can reconnect.  Suddenly like a puzzle where you have been working separate parts and you suddenly find the piece that connects the two bits and see that it actually one bigger piece I had an epiphany - I saw how the piece about fear connect with my evolutionary question.

I realized that it is the being able to see the fear and name it , both my own and other peoples that is the thing that disempowers dualities, and allows God's healing Love to flow in.  My evolutionary question is now:

How do I notice and name fear, both my own and others, in the face of false dualities, in order to turn towards and open towards God's healing love and allow more truth and more justice to manifest?

In the conflict that happened in the Meeting, the duality was named, but the fear underlying it was never named and so it had great power.  One side afraid they would not feel safe (and valued) in the Meeting, the other side afraid we would not live out a value of inclusion and thus would fail our greater self.  Somehow it feels like it should be easier to respond with compassion when these fears are named, and also to figure out how love could help.  And yes to name that their is no action we can take that will vanquish all are fears or make everything safe for everyone.  I also see it is time to take an inventory in my life, to list out the fears lurking under the surface of my own life.   To notice what they are and to offer them up to God.

A Quaker Celebrates Earth Day

 The below are comments I made at an Interfaith service celebrating the 51st annual Earthday.  Each speaker addressed what their faith instructs them about their response to climate change:

Quakers believe that, there is that of God in everyone.  Many things flow from that.  We believe that we can know the truth experientially, and that our understanding of the truth may change over time.  But we hold up, as the truth we have found so far, a belief in non-violence, in equality, in integrity, in simplicity, in community, and in stewardship.  To truly embrace any of these things, leads quite quickly to the need to stop climate change as it threatens all of those things.

One cannot embrace equality and non-violence and turn a blind eye to how climate change is wiping out small island nations and creating catastrophes for some of the poorest people on earth, as well as creating wars over resources.  What does it mean to live in community when your neighbor suffers?  How can we be good stewards on an earth where we are extracting and burning fossil fuels with reckless abandon? 

Our historic call to simplicity has been to reject consumption that is bought at the cost of others’  suffering or distracts from relationship with the Holy One– this is only more true now.  Everything which is manufactured, carries a carbon foot print – some items larger than others – but which are actually necessary for our life?  So many plastic do das, throw away objects, electric potatoe peelers, etc that both clutter the unsimple life and also create more greenhouse gases.   The testimony of integrity is to tell the truth regardless of what it costs you personally – There is a lot of radical truth telling to do these days.  One of the painful truths is about our own complicity in a first world life style that is not sustainable for our Mother Earth.  The whole planet is sustainable at 2,000 Kilowats per year per person. The average American uses 11,000.  The painful truth is even those of us, myself included, that live simply, are living way above our means.

Quakers also believe we can receive leadings from the Divine Spirit – promptings to do the right thing.  In our history that has led us, to hide people escaping slavery, and to fight for women’s right to vote, and to be imprisoned and even killed for our right to practice our faith.  It means that we can be asked to take risks and not play it safe.  I think the magnitude of the climate crisis again requires us, to be boldly faithful.  Our being faithful must begin with earnestly asking the Divine author for guidance on how to rightly live and how to boldly act in the face of this greatest moral crisis of history.  Quakers also believe that when we listen in silence that we can and will hear the Inner Voice prompting us.

I have been a climate activist for 14 years.  People often ask me how I find the hope to keep struggling with this issue, and they also ask me “Is it too late?”.    I have surrendered the question “Is it too late quite” long ago.  Because what I am clear about, is that regardless of if we just squeak by, or if we are in a slow death spiral, our moral commandment is the same: to love our neighbors as ourselves, to try to do justice and to treat people with Love in the face of whatever may come.  Interestingly some of the same things we have to do to adapt to climate change are the same things we have to do to mitigate it.   So it is clear to me that the holy voice of Justice calls us.   My hope lies in the promise that God can enter a situation transformationally when we are faithful.

Why a Feminist Opposes Draft Registration for Womyn

 I am a lifelong feminist and I am a lifelong pacifist, and I do not support extending draft registration to women.   Yep you heard it right Congress is about to vote on extending draft registration to womyn.   Jimmy Carter first reinstated draft registration after the end of the Vietnam war had ended it, back in 1980.  At that time all young men ages 18 thru 20 were required to register.  Many young men bravely publicly refused to register for the draft, challenging a system they felt would quickly lead to another active draft and more US military aggression.   A few were prosecuted, thousands quietly did not register, the justice dept decided to start ignoring that the system was failing. (Audits showed most did not put in change of address forms and the usefulness of the registration cards was ever increasing.)  Despite many states making registration automatic with getting a driver's license and the "Soloman amendment passing, denying Federal financial aid to those young men who could not show they had registered.   And still they system has been so incomplete and inaccurate to be useless, and the military has continued to fill its ranks from the "all volunteer" military.   Otherwise known as the poverty draft.

So why at this point in time would the government seek to extend the failing draft registration to womyn?  The answer is interesting.  A few years back several young men sued the federal government stating that draft registration was sexual discrimination because it only applied to men.   They are correct of course.  And they won.  The government has been given a deadline and then and extension due to change of administrations to resolve the problem.   The Trump administration spent a year with the NCMNPS holding hearings around the country that were quite restricted in who was allowed to testify at these "public" hearings.  They toyed with ideas like making a mandatory public service for all young people for two years.  (Hitler's youth?)  While not military it would have done things in the public interest...as defined by who?  Sounded like building a wall on the Mexican border to me.  The Biden administration is just going with the recommendation of the commission that toured around which is that women be included in draft registration.   No serious consideration seems to have been given to the other obvious solution to the problem: cancel registration for any gender.

The NCMNPS heard testimony from a former Director of the Selective Service System that the current SSS database is so incomplete and inaccurate as to be "less than useless" for an actual draft, and that registration should be ended rather than expanded to women. But the NCMNPS conducted no research on current or likely future compliance, noncompliance, or enforcement of the registration requirement.  This is an outdated system that has never been used for an actual draft, never functioned well even 41 years ago when implemented.  At a cost of $23 million dollars a year, this is just a waste.  This means we have in my lifetime wasted $943 million dollars on this fiasco.

The tired logic has been trotted out again that if women are serious about equality that this means they must do this too.   I am sorry but it is not a "move forward" for womyn to be eligible to be equally shot at, maimed or killed against their wills....because a draft is against your will by definition.  It is a joke to make this claim at the same moment that womyn lost jobs at record rates in the pandemic and Roe Vs Wade is more threatened than it has been since the original ruling - in a year where womyn may actually lose control over their reproductive rights.  But will gain the right to mandatorily be killed in war.

Womyn AND men deserve the right to equal OPPORTUNITIES (threat of death is not an opportunity).  They deserve the right to equal choices - I stand for the rights of womyn who chose military service or who chose abortion.   But neither group deserve to be equally oppressed.   So I don't think we should keep the oppression for just one group (men).  I think we should finally end this flawed and pointless draft registration system.  

Womyn deserve equal rights but they are not the same as men.  There are still differences between men and womyn and differences that create increased risk factors for womyn in militarized zones.  The most obvious one here being the much greater likelihood of a female solider being raped whether by the “enemy” or as military records reveal disturbingly by her own fellow soldiers or commanding officers (25% were sexually assaulted by fellow recruits and 80% were sexually harassed.  In fact, currently they are more likely to be raped in service than killed in service).   Womyn in addition are on average not as strong and thus more prone to injury from things like marching long distances with a heavy bag on their back. (Stats show womyn having twice the injury rate in training then men.)  But also studies are very clear that womyn are far more prone to PTSD – thus putting them in a situation very likely to create PTSD is putting them at more risk.  (10% of womyn wind up reporting PTSD versus the 4% of men reporting PTSD – although this is in part due to the high sexual assault rate.)

The solution to fixing a broken system which is unconstitutionally applied to only one gender is not to apply the same mistake to both genders!  So far the wrong question has been asked which is whether to include women in draft registration.  The correct question would be whether to end the militarizing of our young people of either gender.  A draft (which this registration collects contact info for) is by definition is to enforce service against people’s wills.   It is (despite court rulings to the opposite) involuntary servitude.  It is wrong to force people of either gender to commit acts of violence and to face potential maiming, psychological harm or death.  Let us create equality by treating both genders right rather than imposing on women the same harm already imposed upon men.   

Friends, FCNL strongly fought to end the draft at the end of the Vietnam war and also opposed its reinstitution in 1980.  But now it is "not a priority".   I understand we have limited staff and have to pick what we can do, have many issues we have worked on for years, etc.  But FCNL in theory sets its priorities by having Meetings vote on priorities but this is not even brought to us to vote on.  Non-violence, anti-militarism and the Peace testimony are historic issues for Friends, and yet most Friends do not even know that their daughters and granddaughters are about to be made draftable, because FCNL is not informing us.   Please let them know you do want this addressed. 

Also write to your Congressional representatives and let them know you want it to at least have a hearing in the House (more than happened in the Senate) and that you do not want this applied to women but rather a bill like HR 5492 from last year that would cancel draft registration altogether.  To change what is required for half the population when they reach the age of majority, to impose a requirement that if utilized could result in their deaths, and to do this with no hearing is outrageous!  

For those with eyes to see...Lincoln was Gay

 Sometimes the force of preconception to provide bias is really rather staggering.  I read an article about Lincolns relationship from age 28 to 32 with a man that was provoking in the amazing blind spots that the preconceived assumption that our Presidents were all hetro-sexual seemed to render onto this person's ability to see the obvious.  I suggest you first read this article with at least the consideration that in that day and age closeness between men was accepted but Gayness was not.  Certainly one could not have career success, economic success or political success as an out Gay person.  Thus the choice was to enter a marriage of convenience and then have a fairly non-sexual marriage, and/or to carry on one's actual sex life outside of the marriage.  For someone with integrity the entrance into a marriage of convenience probably also meant to enter into a sort of voluntary celibacy.

http://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/print_only/did-abraham-lincoln-s-bromance-alter-the-course-of-american/article_8de9157d-f89f-52a4-a354-751780643fac.html

While I certainly buy the idea that in that day and age people could not always afford their own beds, that such were more of a luxuery and that often family members or friends shared a bed, so take that as a more minor piece of evidence in this story - I think the timing of both Lincoln's depression and his friend Joshua's speaks volumes.   After living together for years and sharing a very, by all accounts, emotionally intimate relationship - they encourage each other to try to find women to marry.   Lincoln first accomplishes this becoming engaged to Mary Todd, meeting her in 1839 two years into his relationship with Joshua, becoming engaged in 1840 a little after a year from meeting her  and breaking off the engagement on Jan 1st of 1841 6 months later.  It takes him almost two years from the broken engagement to actually marry her.  

As our author points out, Lincoln becomes engaged as his friend plans to move away to take care of his father's estate.  One could argue that in the face of being about to lose his friend and enter a marriage of convinence Lincoln facing this as a choice not congruent with his heart, breaks off the engagement and sinks into a depression about the poor set of choices before him as a gay man.   Speed leaves and becomes almost immediately engaged to a woman he has just met (reads as a rebound to me.)  But he upon becoming engaged also becomes depressed.  I see two men for whom the enormity of marriage presents a final seperation of their relationship creating depression in both men.

Speed has moved to Louisville in the spring of 1841 , after being gone only 4 months, Lincoln comes to visit, for a month and while he is there Speed becomes engaged to a woman he has only know for months, immediately becoming depressed.   He then goes back to Springfield to see Lincoln, staying with him for the rest of the fall only returning at the end of the year to "prepare for his wedding".   You know normally a man in love would be wanting to be around his finance more than his best friend.  This story reads to me that they both shared a belief that they must end their relationship and marry but as they attempt to do so each become depressed, they travel back and forth to see each other and only finally seperate so Speeds marriage can be carried out.

Joshua Speed

Should you think me imaginative, I think the quotes from Lincoln's letters (apparently the matching set from Speed are lost) seem very conclusive.  These letters are written after Joshua goes back to marry.

“You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting,” Lincoln wrote in one of these letters, “that I will never cease, while I know how to do any thing.”  I read this as: "I desire to be with you forever, and I will never cease while I breathe"  “You will feel very badly,” he says knowingly of Speed’s fears about consummating the marriage. And later: “…it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me, to dream dreams of Elysium [paradise in classical mythology] far exceeding all that any thing earthly can realize.”   I find it very illuminating that Speed has fears about consummating the marriage - yes he was probably had never had intercourse, but if one is Gay it is an open question whether you can aroused enough to have intercourse with someone of the opposite sex.  In fact this is enough in question that Lincoln does not reply to the letter confirming the marriage has happened but waits with baited breath to receive a letter from dear Speed confirming the consummation of the marriage.   Saying: "I opened that latter (letter), with intense anxiety and trepidation — so much, that although it turned out better than I expected, I have hardly yet, at the distance of ten hours, become calm.”

Again I am astonished by how bias can blind us.  To me the anxiety and trepidation is about whether his beloved has really crossed over to the life of marriage and the "it turned out better than I expected" is an acknowledge that neither knew if he could bed his wife, but it seems of significance that 10 hours later Lincoln is still not calm.  I read that as he has wanted this for Speed but it is none the less unsettling and deeply emotional.   I am astonished that the author reads this as Lincoln taking courage to confront his own fears of intimacy with women (but why those fears - no explanation) and giving him hope.  Where does he speak of hope.  Rather I see that with his lover now married off he goes back 4 to 5 months later and makes amends to Mary Todd and then also enters the worldly life outside of Elysium.  Lincoln has written to Speed before they both marry: "We both dream of paradise that exceeds what we can realize on earth".  To me that says "we can imagine happiness together but we know we cannot realize it in this society." and that in fact is the source of their mutual depression.

I am amazed by a historian who can interpret all these facts: a shared bed for 4 years, depressions after their engagements, letters and visits back and forth reflecting an intense attachment  -as all hetro normative.   I am reminded how historians interpreted the numerous signs of a early Crete, a matriarchal society, as representing weapons and hierarchy because that is all they had eyes to see, rather than the much less contorted interpretation that it was an egalitarian and matriarchal society.  If one simply starts with the belief that it was hard to be Gay in the 1830's ...the clues are pretty straightforward - it in fact takes no real bending to arrive at the obvious conclusion that at minimum the later to be President was bi-sexual but probably Gay.

And if we stop assuming hetrosexual norms - President Buchanan who is usually referred to as our only "bachelor" President, in fact had a male "roommate" for 16 years before he died of tuberculosis, 4 years before Buchanan became president and was commonly rumored to be his partner.  A little food for thought.

A Light In a Pandemic

 We are coming up on a Year of Pandemic.  Many of us have been in lockdown for 11 months.  There is a national mental health crisis occurring.  Depression and anxiety as well as substance abuse are at record levels.  So are divorces.  How do we find Light in all this?   To answer that question I engaged in my prayer practice (previously mentioned) of holding a question with sacred (to me) texts and opening to the wisdom they reveal.   So this is what I got:

From Emanuel  Book I: "Look to understand your negative feels as a loving Mother would understand a confused and frightened child...Do not deny the part of you that is in darkness or it will manifest again. ...With awareness, you give yourself the gift of an opening for growth and change.  Do not criticize yourself because in darkness you could not see."

Those of you familiar with the classic, The Prophet by Kahil Gilbran know that the section on Laws talks throughout it about the contrast between a rigid law following spirit and a joyful and free spirit.  He goes on to say: "What shall I say to these (the rigid law following ones) save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun? ... What is the sun to them but a caster of shadow?...but you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?

For me this passage serves as a reminder about getting caught up in shoulds or preconceptions which when rigidly held mean we are turned away from the sun and thus in shadow. It means having to face this pandemic with spiritual orientation - looking towards the Light.  Which leads to...

Our beloved Thomas Kelly in the Testament of Devotion: "Continuous renewed immediacy, not receding memory of the Divine Touch, lies at the base of religious living.  Let us explore together the secret of a deeper devotion, a more subterranean sanctuary of the soul, where the Light Within never fades, but burns, a perpetual Flame, where the wells of living water of divine revelation rise up continuously."

I love the rich poetic imagery that Kelly always uses.  He emphatically brings home here are need for each other, for spiritual community, to help renew each other - that our sharing keeps us in a living experience of the divine.  Thus as we face the pandemic community is essential.

Illusions by Richard Bach from the "Messiah's handbook": "Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there.  What your choose to do with them is up to you"  

This one serves to me as a powerful query.   If the pandemic is not in our life as an accident but as collectively created event, then it is incumbent that we understand it on the spiritual level.   I have previously written about this:  http://thefriendlyseeker.blogspot.com/2020/05/i-sent-you-warning.html and   http://thefriendlyseeker.blogspot.com/2020/07/covid-is-still-teaching.html  But he also says all the people in our lives (and that means yes when they are annoying the heck out of us).  Why have I drawn this teacher to me?  As record divorce levels are occurring, and other personal ruptures it is important to ask this question.  The next reading also emphasis this point of how we engage each other right now.

Emmanuel book II:  "Everyone on the planet is your soulmate.  If there is a man selling newspapers on the corner and you are connected to that person with your openness, your love and truth, you are with your soul mate for that moment."   

You may long for an encounter with a stranger right now, but most of us are still going to the grocery store.  We interact with people on zoom, we talk on the phone to people.  And now more than ever it maybe critical to see the soul of the person before us and know that they are sharing an emergency with us.

Neil Donald Walsh: "When you wish to manifest, seek not merely to think of things, but to feel it.  Feel what it would be like to have that.  Feel what it would be like to experience it....Feeling is the way we identify and magnify the energy we wish to experience more of, by resonating with it."  

This is a reminder to those of us who belief in manifestation, as I do, that we must see and feel the thing.  It is particularly hard right now because many of us long for contact with people and trying to imagine that taps into painful longing.  The trick of course is to imagine a party of people, feel the feelings, and then offering it into the hands of God, knowing it will again be and releasing it.  If one can do it with non attachment it is actually a nice little mental vacation trip.

Michael Singer in The Untethered Soul also reminds us that what we do with our mind can also be the source of our suffering and calls us into mindfulness: "You must stop telling your mind that the jobe is to fix your personal problems...Your mind has very little control over this world.  it is neither omniscient nor omnipotent.  ...Nor can it control all the people, places and things around you. ...Whenever it starts telling you what you should or shouldn't do in order to get he world to match your preconceived concepts, don't listen.  ...The truth in everything will be ok as soon as you are ok with everything.  All you have to do is stop expecting the mind to fix what's wrong inside of you. ... The minute you stop putting your whole heart into the mind as if it where your savior and protector, you will find yourself behind the mind watching it."

This is such a helpful reminder about not ruminating about all the political crap which has been happening - it points to how to do some of the above, how to turn towards the sun, how to notice why people an events are in our lives, how to touch into manifesting but in a non attached way.  By stepping back and watching our mind, by adopting a posture of acceptance for what is.

Finally Wayne Dyer from The Power of Intention.  Wayne frequently talks about having our intention (like in the Walsch quote) but being in alignment, noticing thoughts that take us out of alignment.  He urges that we set an intention like: "I feel lovingly connected to others and hopeful."  He encourages us to repeat this to ourselves when negativity arises.

So to summarize all this wisdom: Be gentle and accepting with your negative feelings. Turn away from rigidity and preconception and turn towards the Light.  Use spiritual community to keep you in touch with Living Waters. See all the events and people in your life as teachers.  See the soul of everyone you meet, and it will be a spiritual encounter.  Hold a vision for a good life feeling into that without attachment.  Stop trying to solve your life from your mind - observe instead the events of your life from a place of acceptance.  Have a positive affirmation to say to remind yourself.