A Closer Walk with Gandhi

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

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

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

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

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

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

Organizing from Spirit

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Quality of Silence

Normally my posts here are addressed to a Quaker audience.   Recently talking to someone I had just met about the silence in Meeting for Worship, I realized I had something to write to those who are trying to figure out online what Quakerism is like and if it is something they want to explore further.

My tag line says I am an unprogrammed Friend.   What does that mean?  Quakerism like many other churches has had splits – the first and most significant split was between programmed and unprogrammed Friends,  or between having a minister and not having a minister.   Unprogrammed Friends (those is Friends General Conference, in Friends Conservative and truth be told almost all Independent yearly meetings) keep an hour of silence for worship as did George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, and the Valient 60 – those original Quakers that spread the new born religion.

Throughout my life when I have told someone in conversation that the format of my weekly church service is an hour of silence the most common response is amazed disbelief.   At least some state “that would be very hard”.   Others inquire about the purpose of the silence.  I explain that Friends  believe that in the silence we wait to hear God’s voice, that God can and will speak to us directly.  (that we do not need an intermediator as in so many religions.)  

This belief comes directly from the original opening of George Fox:  “But as I had forsaken the priests, so I left the Separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do; then, oh! then I heard a voice which said, 'There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition': and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. ...and this I knew experimentally. My desires after the Lord grew stronger, and zeal in the pure knowledge of God, and of Christ alone, without the help of any man, book, or writing. For though I read the Scriptures that spake of Christ and of God, yet I knew Him not, but by revelation, as He who hath the key did open, and as the Father of Life drew me to His Son by His Spirit. Then the Lord gently led me along, and let me see his love, which was endless and eternal, surpassing all knowledge that men have in the natural state, or can get by history or books; and that love let me see myself, as I was without Him. I was afraid of all company, for I saw them perfectly where they were, through the love of God, which let me see myself.”

So we sit in the silence and we wait to hear God’s voice and sometimes those hearing a message receive an inward prompting that the message is for sharing and they are moved to (stand and) share it.   Depending upon the size of a Meeting there maybe between 1 message or 6.  It is called a “popcorn” meeting when too many messages are given.  This phrase also implies that as a group we did not ground and so there was a lot of popping up and speaking, but not from spirit!  It is also possible that there are no messages given.  No messages could be just , or it represent a failure equal to the popcorn meeting for the group to ground in spirit.

Which brings me to the subject of this post: the quality of silence.   On one level we think of all silence as the same –the simple absence of noise.   Someone told me there is a language (don’t recall which) that had multiple words for snow:  snow that has just fallen, snow that is crunchy, snow that is slushy, snow that is powery, snow that is old and dirty, etc.   Certainly how many words we have says something about the cultures focus upon that which it names in so many ways.   Apparently English speaking cultures do not pay much attention to silence because we have only one word for it and yet there are many kinds of silence.   For example outside of worship think of an akward silence.   Oh yes we have all had that experience!  Think also of board silence and think of silence in nature alive with crickets or birds but also almost the sound of a branch falling.  Think of the angry silence.   And think of the rich silence that you can go into as a respite and refuge – a place of dreams, reflection and imagination. 

So the quality of silence in worship also varies greatly.  Recently I drove away from my Meeting with a Quaker who was visiting from another Meeting.   She told me that she was drawn to my Meeting because she had experience very good vocal ministry at my Meeting.  There had been none that morning, and so I said:  “Normally we have about 3 message but recently we have had a lot of dead silence.”  She understood immediately what I meant and we began to talk about the difference between a dead silence and a living silence.  For me the dead silence comes when most of the members of the Meeting for worship are not centering – when the main activity in the room is people making to do lists in their brain, fighting inside their head with their boss or their spouse, or daydreaming or problem solving.    We all probably need to do that sort of thing sometimes (That is what the drive to Meeting is for??) but it is not what Meeting for worship is for.  It is certainly not the case that all messages do come from spirit as suppose to be the case.   Quaker’s have jokes about the NYTimes message – which refers to the person who read the paper before coming and feels compelled to make commentary on current events.  There are also Friends who are known for speaking to frequently who compulsively feel the need to fill the silence and may speak almost every week with or without anything to say!

But a Living Silence is an entirely other thing:  it is a silence so rich and so centered and grounded that it is palpable to all but the spiritually dead and can be completely fulfilling even if no message is ever given.  “How interesting” the person I was telling this to said “and the place you listen from that you can discern the difference between a living and a dead silence”.

Out of a living silence can come what Friends call a covered meeting or a gathered meeting (both short for covered by Spirit or gathered in God).   In this living silence the Presence of the Holy One is so palpable that both with or without words, we can feel our connection to each othe,r and we can speak effortlessly to each other’s inward condition.  At its best I liken this living silence to a symphony where different instruments come in at different moments, sounding different notes through the unique resonace which is their instrument, and yet together they create one song, one body of work, one amazing harmony.   While on face value the messages are on different topics, one may discern none-the-less a sort of theme that runs throughout.  This is my finest experience of Quaker Meeting for worship.   In such meeting for worship it is not uncommon that at least some are moved to tears. 

Friends have the saying: “This Friend speaks my mind” which is for use in Meeting for business to indicate that one agrees with the previous speaker and thus avoid the trap of speaking simply to re-emphasize a point.   However this saying goes well also for the experience in a really Gathered Meeting where a message can speak deeply to one’s condition, or even saying what one was going to say.   I have very literally had the experience of asking in silent prayer for guidance from God and having someone rise a few minutes later in worship and give a message that I knew was the answer I had asked for!

“So what” a despairing Friend has asked me, “are we to do about a Meeting where there is repeated dead silence?”  To me that is what we have religious ed, Ministry and Worship, or Ministry and Oversite for (various names for committees in different Meetings which do the same work.)  If Meetings are becoming uncentered, it is time to spend some time in worship sharing during second hour, or to study Quaker history, or to have discussion about spiritual practice….in short it is time to stoke the fires of our collective spirit life!

It is also time to tell the truth to each other about the current spiritual condition of our Meeting.  I remember many years ago when my Meeting was writing its’ annual state of the Meeting report my suggesting we add the sentence “We have been going through a period of spiritual dryness”.   Oh my goodness the dirty looks I got and objections that this was not true.  Despite our Quaker commitment to integrity it is apparently hard for us to tell the truth sometimes about our dry spells.  I shortly thereafter went on M&W and addressed the issue that way.   So it is possible to return to a Living Silence through many means.