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 Quakers should be Vegetarians

This article appeared this month in FJ.   Here is the slightly longer unedited version.

Being a Vegetarian is a Climate Issue                                           By Lynn Fitz-Hugh

I would like to make the case for Quakers becoming vegetarian.  Quakers at one point wore black and white clothing so as not to create a market for dyed clothing because the dying process was so carcinogenic that those working in the industry died young.  Quakers also, over a process of many years came to unity on the practice of owning slaves as inhumane, unjust, and inequitable. Our testimony of simplicity has always called us to own less as a way of not being driven by material attachments or over consumption of our earth’s resources..  John Woolman called us to look to our possessions and removed the seeds of war (and I would add suffering.)  All of these ideas: caring for our ourselves, our fellow human beings, and the earth, lead me to conclude that the modern day application would be for Friends to become vegetarian. 

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I first became a Vegetarian while attending Earlham and I have been a vegetarian, of some stripe now for 4 decades.   I became vegetarian not for health or spiritual reasons or the issue of animal welfare.  (Although after reading Charlotte’s web in childhood I never again ate pork)  I became vegetarian for political reasons. I learned at Earlham that we could end world hunger if we stopped using food to feed cattle consumed by people.

I will briefly describe my journey with vegetarianism to illustrate the point that there are many ways to flexibly hold a witness about the effects of meat production on our environment, animals and our planet.  I grew up in a meat and potatoes kind of family where every meal was meat, carbs and over-boiled veggies. I therefore could not even imagine how someone could or would eat vegetarian.  The first time I had a week of delicious vegetarian meals when I was 21 I was instantly converted.  I knew then that it was possible to eat well without meat.  Nine years later I wound up in a situation where I had to travel a stretch of road dotted with one fast food restaurant after another during dinner hour and then enter a facility for three hours that had no food! The only thing I could find to eat was bean burritos at Taco Time. That was okay for a while but after three months of bean burritos three times a week I thought I would barf if I saw another one!  I reluctantly added fish back into my diet.

For the next 15 years, I only ate meat outside of my house and then infrequently . In order to welcome my meat eating step-son into our house I began to cook chicken and fish at home. My husband at the time, who had been 100% vegetarian for nine years, was amused that I describe myself as vegetarian.  I told him that so far, he had still eaten vastly more meat in his life than I and that would be true for years. After we divorced I stopped eating meat again.   Then I developed some health issues that the doctor said was from not eating enough animal protein.  Currently I eat fish and eggs each once a week which seems to be enough to maintain good health. Apparently, sometimes what we wind up eating is a series of events created by the landscape we travel.  

In my early vegetarian years, I learned quickly that simply mentioning that I was vegetarian brought a strange guilty/defensive reaction from others.  Without my saying anything other than “I don’t eat meat”, people would start offering explanations and justifications for eating meat.  I learned not to make a big deal about my choices because I got tired of listening to people’s guilt. I had not become vegetarian to assume a position of moral superiority over others.  I mention this because some of you as you read this may notice feelings of guilt or defensiveness.  I ask you to try to wrestle with those feelings.  I suspect that Friends who were first asked to give up owning slaves also wrestled with guilt and defensiveness.  I think that each of us will have to do the best we can with the moral issues present at this point in history that involve meat production and consumption.  

As my bumpy path demonstrates I have no morally superior position to speak from.  I am not trying to tell the reader how to eat.  I am however  asking you to exam the moral issues with meat consumption in the age of climate change.  I also think that this is not a black and white no meat no dairy or everything.  Some people choose to be vegan, some vegetarian, some eat no red meat, some are pescatarian eating only fish, and some just eat less meat than they used to.  Change is not easy, but if we hold this loosely we can explore and begin to shift.

Climate Change

The first reason that I would call Friends to vegetarianism is climate change.  Friends overall are well aware of and very concerned about the threat of climate change. Friends have earlier written to FJ about why climate change touches on every one of our testimonies.  Early in my climate activism I started making a comprehensive list of what people could do to lower their carbon footprint.  What blew me away was discovering that one of the biggest reductions people could make was simply cutting out eating meat!   The fertilizer used to create animal feed, the transport of the feed, the amount of feed to produce a comparable amount of animal protein, and the transport of the animal are all very energy intensive activities.  Eating lower on the food chain and eating foods grown organically produces far less carbon.  

There’s yet another drawback to eating animals such as cows and sheep.   Their manure, burping and flatulence deposits large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, and methane is 20 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon.  I know that sounds like a joke, but it is true.

I have seen various charts showing how much carbon per day/per year a person would save if they didn’t eat meat.  The data doesn’t agree exactly, but they all show HUGE savings.  By one estimation if you cut out eating meat one day a week for a year, you save 700 pounds of carbon, cut it out two days a week  you save 1400 pounds of carbon a year and cut out all meat and you save a whopping 4,900 pounds of carbon a year. By point of comparison switching out one 60-watt bulb saves 100 pounds a year.  

A more conservative chart showed the savings from giving up all meat to be equivalent to giving up driving a Prius. (Some of this depends upon how much meat you were eating to begin with.)  The UN list meat production as 18% of worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) production.   What would happen to climate change if we all cut out that 18% of GHS emissions in the next year? This is the point at which I went back to not eating any meat.  The newly released book Drawdown by Paul Hawken’s lists 200 ways for humans to reduce or sequester carbon.  The fourth solution is eating a plant based (non-meat) diet.

Again, if one holds flexibly the goal of eating less meat to achieve more social justice, it is helpful to know the following.  The production of lamb is by far the highest carbon footprint, two times that of beef which is also terrible.   After beef, cheese has a little less than half the footprint of beef (but still high because of how cows are raised in the US), then comes pork, salmon, turkey, tuna…with tuna being half the footprint of pork, and eggs just a bit less than tuna.    Yogurt or tofu has one third the footprint of tuna.  Inexplicably cow milk is lower than even vegetables. (See www.ewg.org       For chart) 

A vegetarian who did not eat cheese, but did eat eggs, yogurt, tofu and milk could get enough protein and produce relatively low GHG emissions. Forty percent of all energy used for industrial agriculture is for fertilizers and pesticides.  Thus organic food systems use 30 to 50% less energy and the soil sequesters about 28% more carbon than industrial-farmed soil.

Clearly being vegan would have the best carbon footprint, but there are significant health issues surrounding eating vegan.  (Hats off to those of you who put in the effort to do it safely.)  There are also vegans who feel that it is indeed perfectly safe and there are conflicting studies about this.  Like all the choices mentioned here eating vegan may work for some though not all.  Each of us needs to find our right choice.   

Peace Testimony

Not killing animals speaks to our testimony of non-violence. Even if you are comfortable with the idea that in the cycle of life some animals eat other animals, I would suggest that if you take even a cursory look at Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), you would be horrified.  The animals are raised and killed in inhumane, crowded and violent ways.   This, at a minimum, is reason to look to pasture raised animals.

Climate change is creating drought and resulting food shortages.  The argument has been made, I feel convincingly, that the war in Syria really began over food shortages.   So the issue of using food to feed production livestock rather than export it to other countries so more people can eat is a peace issue.

Social Justice, Equality and Simplicity

As explained above meat is an energy intensive way of producing protein. Seventy nine percent of farmland is for livestock feed and pastures.  Rich countries have higher levels of meat consumption (and resultingly higher obesity levels).  We could feed 2.9 billion more people if meat were not produced.  One acre of grain produces five times more protein than one acre used to produce meat, and feeds 25 people as opposed to one carnivore.  Meat production is also a much more water intensive way to produce food, and as water becomes more scarce it will also be increasingly more of a resource issue.  Both equity and simplicity testimonies always have been about not living in ways that deprive others of their quality of life.  The idea of “live simply, so others can simply live” is embodied here.

Earth Stewardship

Quite aside from all of the climate change issues mentioned above, CAFO’s (where most meat in the US is produced) are one the greatest contributors to the pollution of local creeks, ponds, rivers and aquifers due to the runoff from animal waste into these water sources.  The way mass crops are produced (most of which in the US are for animal feed) under agribusiness strip the soil of nutrients and do not sequester carbon like organic farming methods do.

So Friends I invite you to take up the challenge of reducing or eliminating your meat consumption!  I would like to see that for our Quarterly, Yearly and annual gatherings like FGC that we try working with our food providers to provide only vegetarian meals.   This would be a great way for Friends to experience delicious and healthy eating, and to support those who are working on such changes.  I invite you to this witness for peace, equality, stewardship and justice.

Downsizing- and Quaker Simplicity

I have an empty nest.  My only child left for college.   My father taught me the way to retire is to own your home outright by the time you retire so rhat your income can pay for everything else.   I came late to that project (45) and took out a 30 year mortgage.   Was pretty clear I did not want to work till 75.   So with downsizing and buying a smaller place this means carving that mortgage down to something closer to when I want to retire.

Query 1) What do I owe money on?  Is it worth the time I will spend working for it?

I had had a too big living room.  I had a den and my daughter's room.   Seemed like combining them would account for 300 extra square feet.  In my mind all the furniture fit in this new configuration of space.   Except I forgot to notice that the good closets in this space where stilll in smaller space  - in otherwords less storage space.   So here comes moving day and in the days following as I go to unpack I realize I have never moved to smaller space.   Everything is not going to fit.  I have to actually let go of things!  I see my things with new eyes:

Query 2)  When is the last time I used this item?  Will I really use it again?

The easy items are the ones you can says years and no too.   I get to notice things (that I have studied in books) like how in a low income mindset you keep stuff because you don't know if you will need it again, but you know you may well not have money for it if you do need to get it again.   I have more money now than when raising a child.  

Query 3) Is it ok to let go of something I'm not using by telling myself I can buy it again if I need to?  Is it simplicity to have less things?  Or is it simplicity to buy less things over time?

But the worse dilemma is my own sentimentality.   Here is something from my (long) dead mother. Here is something from my daughter's baby years.  Here is something from my happy College days.
Can I bear to let things go?  The things are not the emotions, but they do evoke the emotions.

Query 4) Is there an appropriate role for sentiment and memory in simplicity?

Worse yet were the gifts.   So many things people gave me.  Some that I love and use and those are straightforward.  But what about the unwanted gifts?  What about the things dutifully held because they represent the love of the person who gave it?  My daughter has thrown away things in leaving for college that she currently does not find useful, but that I worked hard to provide for her.

Query 5)  How to honor simplicity and the loving intentions of those who gift us?

As my friends helped me carry the hanging cloths from my closet to the car, I started to feel guilty.  Really there are so many.  The first world guilt kicked in...there are people in other countries that have two changes of clothing, or have only tattered clothing.   Here I am with a 6 or 7 foot pool of clothing.   That's it, I thought, I'm going to pair this down.   I thought it would be easy that I would simply get rid of things I had not worn in a long time.   But I discovered as I looked, that I will wear many things once a year, just because I feel that way that day.  I decided well I will just make a reasonable rule:  I will only have X number of button shirts, and Y number of pants.   But then the season thing starts: well I have to have warm and cold weather things, and then the inbetween.  So how many is a reasonable number to have?   A weeks worth of shirts?  But what about dresses then? While this all sounds like I'm a clothes hound the truth is I wear things lightly rarely ever wearing things out.  I still have t-shirts in good condition from 35 years ago!  So I actually probably buy far less clothing than many Americans because I keep it and just add one or two items a year.  I achieve variety not by getting rid of getting new stuff, but by rotating through my decades of clothing.  (Ridiculed by my sister for never being "in fashion".)  

Query 6)  What is enough?  How many is enough?

I have moved a lot in my life.  It has kept me honest.  Every move I got rid of stuff I had not used, that I did not want to keep carrying around.  Compared to most Americans my age I am already traveling light.   And yet compared to most people in the world I am indeed wealth and the owner of much.  I have tried to care for my things, to use them lightly, to not cast things aside because they are no longer new or shiney, to keep them working as long as possible.  This to me is what it means to be a good steward of resources.   But there is a place to say "no this does not go to Good Will; it goes in the trash" - to recognize the end of the useful life of any object.  My depression era parents often kept things to fix them and make them useable again.  But really they just sat around.

Query 7)  Do I know when to let go of something?

The final query is one I got years ago from a book and I have kept it in my mind and it has served me well.  It has spared me from being owned by my possessions, helped me notice the real cost in time and energy of owning some kinds of things.

Query 8)  Do I own my possessions or do they own me?

As you can see simplicity is not simple!

A Missing Piece of the Truth

Quakers have a wonderful belief that not only can one person say NO, but that they may have a piece of the truth that the rest of the group has not noticed.  We believe this because in Meeting for business for Worship we are ALL suppose to be listening for the truth.  Thus this one lone voice is not someone's opinion, but gives voice to a deeper truth.

Like many other Quakers I belong to many other groups who operate by consensus, but in those groups usually a single or even several dissenting voices will be ignored so we can "get things" done. And of course in those groups there is no belief that we are looking for divine guidance.  In those groups we are looking for the group wisdom or just unity for action.  There we believe we are guided by our own intellects, so it again becomes easy to get competitive about differences of opinions and to be attached to desired outcomes.

In a previous piece about internalized Quakerism, I have shared about how the Quaker ways I was raised in influence the way I operate in the outside world: sometimes for the best and sometimes for the worse.  When it is for the best I am able to help inform, educate and elevate other groups I belong to.   When it is for the worst, I am unconsciously expecting people in these other secular settings to behave like Quakers and am surprised, distressed or ill prepared when they do not.  I'm sure all Quakers have had the experience of being in a secular setting where a group has to decide on something and someone calls for a "vote" and after a few people make "persuasive" ranging to "bullying" or "domineering" comments, the group votes.   The vocal majorities view point installed and everyone else's needs or wants are disregarded.  As a Quaker there is a distinctly bad feeling knowing that many people have just lost.  It does not feel better to me, as a Quaker, when my "side wins" the vote because I can feel the subtle violence of people being run over.

So the interesting question to me is how can we bring a little bit of Quakerism to the rest of the world?  I'm not talking here about preaching about Quakerism.   I think in general the voice that says: "the way my group (church) does it is..."   Is not a voice that is well appreciated.  However, I do think that if we simply use what we know to make suggestions, if we hold out the idea that it is possible that a minority view point is worth listening to, or that if we don't rush to vote once we have a majority number, but keep problem solving till more people are happy, or suggest that there could be a win/win that will please everyone...I think these suggestions are powerful ones that can be transformative for groups we are in.  I have verbalized to my climate group on several occasions that a sole voice of dissent can still be bringing us valuable information and asked us to consider that. I think this has been a very revolutionary thought for many in the group and changed how we listen to each other.

I remember in my 20's going to anti-conscription meetings that an older Quaker man was in.  He did not speak often, but whenever he did it was to urge the group to look more deeply at a minority view point that had already been stated, or to ask us to look for third ways, or to ask us to figure out how we could make the "proposal on the table even better" by addressing concerns raised about it.  I remember being comforted by his mere presence in the room and awed by how he consistently made the group function better.   Now in retrospect I can see that he was choosing to "clerk" the meeting even without the title.  What if we all did that where we are?  We could be "patterns and examples" wherever we go.

Recently in my secular climate group we went to meet with our two Senator's staffs.  In the first meeting the aid was saying things that were frankly quite ill informed and fairly useless.  One of my comrades in anger snapped at her "Could we talk to someone who knows something."   X I called out his name, stopping him, then to her I said "I'm sorry for that; we would like to know..."  After we left he was curious about why I had stopped him and eager to tell me that she did not know what she was talking about and it was appropriate to be angry."  I told him: "Emotion is always appropriate, but not disrespect.   She is simply trying to do her job.   She is a child of God just like you and I, and we get to disagree with her as much as we want, but it is not ok to treat her with disrespect".   Thus I did not have to tell him all about God within each of us, yet still I had "eldered" him about a Quaker principal in a way he could hear and understand.  (He conducted himself respectfully in the next Senator's office.)

I have written in a previous blog about having to learn how to testify in secular settings not from my intellect, but from still listening for the truth I am to speak.  This again is an example of learning how to bring my Quakerism into my activism.

My most recent and startling realization is that I was clerking secular meetings where I was providing no point of view, but trying to get the group to look at the deeper questions with the assumption that that would lead us to the truth.  After a number of very dissappointing times of the loudest voice in the room carrying the day or many people being uncomfortable because they did not know the answers to the questions I was raising, I finally realized I was misapplying the Quaker model here.  I was operating as if people where going to listen for God's voice when they were not.   So instead I listened in myself for what the truth might be as best I could grasp that.  I put it down on paper as a "proposal" and brought it to my group, stating clearly that I was not attached to the proposal and willing to see it change if we could think of better ideas.  It gave the group a jumping off place for discussion, it gave us focus and rather than hours of wandering around lost in circles we were able to have a productive discussion and come to a decision.

It was fascinating for me to realize that in that case, before hand my Quaker assumptions or patterns were not serving me well.  I now have a better way, but I will need a Quaker committee of elders or anchor committee, so I do not get lost in ego or blindspots by this way of trying to lead.  In general the American public does not see the search for Truth as part of the work of life.   But there is no reason we cannot call our fellow citizen's to look for the Truth.  In fact what a breath of fresh air for most people to have presented the idea that the Truth is out there and available and that we can hold it up!

Quaker Parenting

This article appeared in Friends Journal in the April 2015 issue.

By: Lynn Fitz-Hugh & Sara Alice Grendon

My daughter, age 16, is a dyed-in-the-wool Quaker.  Other Quaker parents are often very curious how I pulled this off.  To me one of the most significant things is that from her birth, I felt I was steward of a spiritual being, a soul sent into my care and nurture.

I noticed early on her own expressions of spirituality, and unlike non-religious parents who might ignore or even discourage these expressions, I encouraged and nurtured them. My daughter had a great love of nature and expressed a sense of awe that tied what she encountered to a sense of majesty and the mystical.  I affirmed this.  I was influenced by the writings of Barry and Joyce Visnell who say that our image of An All Powerful and hopefully Loving God is shaped by our early experience of our own parents as all powerful.  This makes much more important how we as parents use power and model just, fair, compassionate and truthful behavior.

I am a leader among West Coast high school Friends, and soon to be part of a lovely team of powerful young Quakers, clerking FGC’s high school program. You don’t get this way by accident. There are choices my mother made as a Quaker parent which led to my growing into my Quaker-ness, and I suspect if one asked my weighty Young f/Friends how they got that way, we’d have similar experiences.  If we really wish to see the Religious Society of Friends continue, Quaker parents must raise Quaker children, and this does not have to mean shoving your beliefs down your kid’s throat. 

It seems Quaker parents rarely tell their children what to believe. However, they often don’t give them the spiritual framework to figure it out themselves, which is oh so necessary for a child exploring their own spiritual life. What I find most horrifying is when we don’t acknowledge our kids as having spiritual thought. As if somehow being a child means they can’t feel the Spirit. Doesn’t that contradict the idea of, “that of God in everyone”?

“Mommy, what is God?” I asked from the 3-year-old booster-seat.

“I can’t tell you,” my mother said. Unsatisfied with this frustrating answer I asked, “Why not?”    

“I could tell you what I think God is, but you’re going to have to form your own definition,” she told me, meeting my eyes thru the baby mirror.  I know that I proceeded to ask my mom for her definition of God, but I couldn’t tell you what she said next, because that isn’t the significance of this memory. This conversation from the back seat on a spring day when I was 3 is still so memorable because this interaction set a precedent for the rest of my life. I knew from that point onward, that my mother would never tell me what to believe.  

When Sara was about 3 or 4 we went to the Olympic Peninsula and camped overnight on a bluff looking out at the rock stacks jutting up in the ocean.  We woke at low tide and walked through the fog out to the base of the now exposed stacks.  The ocean had retreated to reveal starfish, barnacles, and small fish in tide pools swimming to the music of the ocean!  Sara was enchanted!

A number of years later when 7 she announced to me:  “I know what God looks like.”

Some parents would have rushed in with logic about how no one can know what God looks like.  I held my breath and calmly said:     “What does God look like?” 

She then described to me the mystical experience she had on the Peninsula that morning and said solemnly “that’s what God looks like.”  I could only agree and be amazed at her wisdom of recognizing the Presence of the Creator when 3 years old.

            I never set out to teach Sara the testimonies.  I tried to live them and this made them values that were real to her.  Each of us describes below our memories of how some of these things were communicated/learned:

Social Justice: 

When Sara was three, WTO took place in our town.  I decided I would take Sara to the demonstration but leave if it got violent or tear gas was released (this was before all that began.)  How to explain to a three year old what was happening?  She knew who our President was, and most children’s books had Kings as rulers, so I explained to her that there was an important meeting happening in Seattle where Presidents and Kings of other countries were coming together to decide how things like water and food would be made available to people all over the world, and some of the things they wanted to do would make it hard for people to have clean water or enough food.  Sara said,  “We should tell them to share with everyone.”  I told her that the people we were going to walk with would carry signs to make that message to the Kings and Presidents.  When the tear gas started a mile ahead of us I quickly pulled us out of the march and turned around to go home telling her simply “we need to go home now.”  She cried saying “No mommy, I want to see the Kings first.  We have to tell them.”

I think children naturally want to do what is right for all and if you don’t confuse them by doing otherwise they stay with that belief.  Throughout Sara’s life I explained why we bought certain foods or products and not others and what the labor conditions of the workers or the implications for other people were. Politics were constantly discussed at our dinner table.

I am an Activist. Most 16 years olds will not own up to that yet.  One of my frustrations with our faith is that not all Quakers are Activists, but I believe the words should be synonymous. When social justice is a testimony of our faith and we believe in peace, equality, integrity, and stewardship why would we not stand up for these?  I was taught to. Partly out of being born with a rebellious spirit, but largely due to my mom’s example.  I still remember WTO protest and many other protests. I was taught that if you want justice in this world you must seek it through non-violent revolution and that it doesn’t get done any other way.

Peace:

 My own parents, also Quakers, would not let my sister and me have toy guns or even water pistols growing up.  I resented the water pistols part so when Sara was little I got her a plastic fish that squirted water.  I did however always tell her that it was wrong to kill under any circumstances because there was that of God in everyone and that one should not hit or be violent to others either. I also told her that her classmates would believe otherwise because of how they were raised by their parents and prepared her for the idea that beliefs about this differ widely in our society. She never entertained the idea that violence was a way to solve things.  I acknowledge readily to parents of boys that I think this is much more challenging when raising a boy because of the messages in our culture to boys about violence.

The peace testimony is one I’ve watched parents nail bite over, and is perhaps the hardest to teach in a society that worships violence. In the simple logic of my toddler’s mind it wouldn’t make sense to hit another kid in the face for a toy, because then they would hit me, and who wants to get hit in the face? But it’s a little more complex than that; our culture is so saturated in violence that it’s hard to not expose our kids, but that’s the key: exposure. I was not allowed to watch certain TV shows, or movies rated higher due to “violent themes.” I won’t lie: I didn’t like it. When all your other friends with non-religious, non-pacifist, and very American parents get to watch something and you don’t, it’s not fun. But it was those kids that hit each other for building blocks and used violent language.  I’ve grown to appreciate my mother’s sensibilities.

Equality:

I was not allowed to watch Disney as a kid. This was the hardest media sensor of all because little girls love princesses, all my friends loved princesses, and wanted to be one. Of course I eventually saw some of the Disney Princess movies at other little girls’ houses, but that didn’t stop my mom’s intention from living on.  She would tell me;

          “Disney is sexist and racist; all those princesses are always rescued by men, why do they need men to save them?”  I never had an answer for that question. I look back now on my childhood and I frequently tell folks that my mother’s greatest feat as a parent was not allowing me Disney. Because I didn’t watch Disney I didn’t learn from the crows in Dumbo, or the warthog in the Lion king that, people who talk in Ebonics or with a Latin American accent are dumb.  I didn’t learn from the shading differences in lion’s fur that “bad guys” are darker than the other lions. In fact I didn’t learn the concept of “bad guys.” Simultaneously hearing in Children’s meeting that God is in all of us, along with less exposure to stereotyping, I learned equality.

  I did not want Sara to learn good/bad dichotomies or stereotypes about gender and race , but all her friends could watch Disney, and so this was frustrating to her.  I would explain to her what a stereotype was and that these movies had them.  This was uninteresting and unsatisfying to her and I did not think I was getting anywhere, till one day when she was four she was looking at a Disney T shirt of princesses in a store (a previously much coveted item) and she said to me:  “I don’t want this anymore.”  I asked why and she explained:  “There is no princess for Layla” (an African American friend in her preschool).  I knew at that moment that she understood.

Integrity:

 I told Sara it was important to tell the truth and I always told her the truth.  Sometimes I would tell her a subject was too adult and I would not talk about it, but even when I made her promises I would not make them unless I knew I could follow through on them.  I also made clear to her that I expected her to tell the truth and that it was important to me that she not lie.  I realized when she was small that if she did something wrong and I punished her when she told the truth, this would teach her to lie.  So if I asked her something like “How did this get here?  Who spilled this?” or “Who broke this?” and she told me the truth I did not punish her.  I just told her what I wished she had done or expressed my disappointment or other feelings about it.  I also sometimes expressed appreciation that she was telling me the truth. 

As she got older she would sometimes initiate discussions with me about situations with friends where she was struggling to figure out how to act with integrity.  The sincerity with which she examined these things always impressed me, and I wished some adults I knew would give as much thought to their integrity!

Integrity is my favorite testimony; it’s also the hardest to live by 100% of the time, which is why it is my favorite. Every kid will experiment with lying; when I did my mom didn’t get mad, just disappointed. That disappointment was enough to make it feel icky, and it remained so. But integrity is more than simply honesty.

This testimony I learned alongside equality, and in my world they are inseparable. I learned Integrity to myself as female, being spared images of Barbie’s “basketball boobs,” and Disney princesses’ helpless wails. Like violence, it’s about what you expose your kids to.

As a child I played a game with which I still do. When I didn’t like my classmates I’d look for their Light, in trait that wasn’t that awful, or the way they drew with crayons. Now I look for what I can relate too, even if it’s only their teenage insecurity. This is how I learned to treat even the kids I didn’t like with integrity.  

Simplicity:

We all know the United States is a hot bed of consumerism.  The encouragement to want, want, want, and buy, buy, buy, is a trap easy for children to fall into, since advertising is catered toward them. In part I learned simplicity because growing up with a single mom we never had a ton of money, so when I’d ask for luxury grocery items I was denied.  But she would say to me with my bottle of Nutella in hand. “Do you need that?” And I couldn’t make a case for why these things were a necessity, so this logic forced me to put them down. 

From my Aunt Cindy (who is not Quaker) I learned that gifts aren’t always material. Every year she takes me to a show for my birthday, and it’s the best gift she could give me.  My mother lives simply (as Americans go) and I learned by example, but never felt deprived or empty, only fulfilled by life.  

  Like most children Sara wanted toys her classmates had or things she saw advertised on TV.  We had a LOT of dialogues about how and why I was not going to buy most of these items.   I tried to tell her that she had enough and did not need toys that do things for you.. Everyone and their uncle was giving Sara stuffed toys, and when there were 30, I put my foot down!  I told her she had too many to play with and they needed to be loved by someone.  Then I said that from now on if she got another one she would decide whether to keep it and give up one she already had or to just give it away.  She kept to this and as a result we could see some parts of her bed!

If I had to say one thing to Quaker parents it would be that Quaker parenting requires a lot of hard stands, swimming against the tide of popular society, needing to explain a lot of things and having the strength of your convictions, but it also unites with that which is innate in all humans—a sense of fairness and love and wanting good for all.  The results are pretty stunning.

Sara now goes by Alice.  Both belong to Eastside Friends Meeting near Seattle, WA.  Lynn is a therapist and Climate Activist.  Sara Alice has turned 18 since this was written and attending Hampshire College and Mt. Toby Meeting and is a climate activist in her own right.

Corporate Witness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Give Testimony

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diary of a Quaker Climate Activist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace,
Lynn

The Quaker and the Buddhist

Many Buddhists have crossed my path in the last decade.  Not a surprise really when you note the commonalities between Quaker's and Buddhists.  The most obvious is the form of worship...silent meditation although the goal and the intent is somewhat different in that silence.  Quaker's intentions are to clear the space to know God's mind.  Buddhists do not believe in God precisely, but see meditation as a discipline of the mind and a path to loving compassion.  Both Faiths hold high the pursuit of Truth.  As I jokingly like to tell my Buddhist friends, unlike Quakers, Buddhists number everything and find 4 this and 8 that and 4 subsets of the eight, etc.

Buddhists say that the way to end suffering is the eightfold path.  I'm fascinated by how the eightfold path is both similar and different from Quakerism and below are my reflections on the eightfold path.

1. Right Understanding: Learning the the nature of reality and the truth about life.

Early Friends called themselves Friends of the Truth, or Publishers of Truth and saw their role as to seek and know God and God's will and to be absolutely faithful to this.  This is still why we gather in silent worship.

2. Right Aspiration Making the commitment to living in such a way that our suffering can end.

Quakers have testimony's which we say are the truth as we know it.  We have a firm believe in continuing revelation and so believe that no statement of Truth can ever be final.  But the testimonies which we do have are our statement of the truth as we currently know it and as such we commit to trying to live them out to the best of our ability.  I have noticed that Quaker's really beat themselves up and guilt trip themselves about the failure to do that.  Because of another Buddhist belief numbered in 4 that has to do with stepping away from ego I think Buddhists do a better job of accepting their short comings in reaching their aspirations.  (Or maybe I only think so because they have 4 reasons not to get caught in ego about this endeavor.)

Interestingly non-violence is one of the right aspirations of Buddhism...which of course coincidentally is one of the truths that Quakers have also been lead to.

3.  Right Effort Just Do It. No Excuses.  Be in Wholesomeness.

Hmmm... well that would seem to contradict what I just said above wouldn't it.  I must say it is a trait I like about Buddhists that they live in a very committed and dedicated way in the world.  Although I suppose from the outside many would say the same about Quaker's going to prison to avoid conscription, or for not taking off their hat to the King etc.  This is also said by Buddhist to mean no taking of life, no stealing and no sexual misconduct.  So again Buddhist and Quakers share a commitment to non-violence but because of how it is stated this means vegetarianism for Buddhist, but not for Quakers. (Although many Quakers have made that logical connection.)  Somehow not stealing just seems hardly worth discussing if you are trying to live peacefully with others.  I have not heard Quaker's talking about sexual misconduct, so I do not know if this is an issue we should be examining or not?

4.  Right Speech Speaking the truth in a helpful and compassionate way.

I have seen this written in other Buddhist contexts as a commitment not to lie, be divisive, abusive or to gossip.  It is interesting that it focuses on speech since early Quakers used thee and thy differently than the rest of the population in an attempt to not make class distinctions and to treat all people as equal.  They also refused to swear oaths because those implied that truth was only spoken sometimes and we had "one standard of truth" to be spoken at all times.  Our testimony on integrity is all about truth telling and Quakers are very committed to only telling the Truth as well as applying non-violence to our language.  However, I think we could stand to examine the Buddhist challenge to not gossip or be divisive because....well I think we are a little prone in that direction, Friends.

5.  Right Conduct Living a life consistent with our values.

Well this again would seem like the emphasis Quakers put on trying to live out our testimonies, to live by the truth that has been given to us.  It also points to the Quaker idea that if you follow a leading (an opening to the Truth) that you will be lead into greater Truth, and that you must also listen for the end of a leading so that you do not "outrun your Light, or your Guide."   Quaker's talk about things as being "rightly ordered" which means that it does with prayerful attention and listen to the Light, not out of ego or pride.

6.  Right Livelihood Earning a living in a way that doesn't hurt others.

Early American Quakers gave up slaves 100 years before the rest of the US because they were lead into the corporate truth that this was a violence against other human beings.  Early Friends in England were farmers and business men because they were due to religious restrictions not allowed in many other professions.  As such they started universal pricing (instead of bargaining) so there would be one truth about the value of things.  They have for the most part avoided professions in defense, gambling, production and marketing of addictive substances, etc. as inconsistent with the Truth as they knew it.  Buddhist similarly were urged not to work in the sale of weapons, people, meat, intoxicants, poison, etc.

7.  Right Mindfulness Recognizing the value of the moment; living where we are.
This is one I think Quakers could stand to benefit from paying some attention to.  For the most part I think our seeking is sort of outward, to know God.  It is not reflective upon the very moment, and yet in my personal experience it is a very attuned awareness to the moment that I can most clearly see God speaking.

8.  Right Concentration Expanding our consciousness through meditation.
Again this I think is where the path of Buddhism separates from Quakerism.  Quakers are for the most part fairly undisciplined about how we meditate and in fact I have heard long term Quakers still expression confusion or discomfort about what they do in the silence.

God is not Done Speaking Yet

Over a year ago the UCC church down the street from my Meeting had a big banner which said:  "God is not done speaking yet".  At first I thought rather smugly "Well Quakers know that the Truth is evolving, that is why we have testimonys and not creedal statements."  But I eventually came to just appreciate the sign as a good reminder that we have to keep listening to hear and know God.

The summer issue of Friends Journal is on Testimonys and has challenged us throughout the issue to not put a rich deep history, most of which was lived without any such concept of testimony's, into neat little boxes.  It challenges to keep living in the Root of those testimonys and not in their fruit.  It demands of us that we not make them things and as such creedal statements instead of living testimonies.

Parker Palmer, the well known Quaker theologian, many years ago wrote of the cross that it is the intersection between the vertical now of God, and the horizontal here and now of our lives as we live them on this plain.  It is a powerful intersection.

Both that cross and that issue of FJ ask us, as the Peace testiomny does "to live in that Life and Power"....yes the one that takes away the occasion for all war, but also the one that can invade our being and reorder it, that can center us in a second, that can fill us with Love, and give us the courage for powerful action.  There is a decision I have made throughout my life, over and over again, that I want to live in that center...and yet over and over again I find myself somewhere else and having to return to the attempt to live in that center.

I can bring my body to Meeting for Worship, and I can sit and think about my problems.  But when I do that I am doing that out of the old habit that I am author of my life.  It is an entirely different thing to bring those problems to The Holy One, to ask for guidance, to submit them in prayer, and to sit still wait listening to hear the answers from a God who is still Speaking.

Living in that Life and Power

I have long felt the most fascinating phrase in the peace testimony is not the famous part of "All bloody Principles & Practices, we do utterly deny, with all outward wars & strife, & fightings with outward Weapons, for any end or under any pretence whatsoever. And this is our Testimony to the whole world."  but rather the phrase, "We live in that Life and Power which takes away the occasion for all war."   This second phrase to me speaks so powerfully a real testimony of faith, a witness to the whole world of a transformative and overwhelming power and rock upon which early Friends found the strength not just to refuse conscription but to stand non-violently in the face of harms way in any number of other witnesses to the world.  It also describes the peace of living in God's Life.  It calls the listener forward to want that life.  And I have sometimes wondered, feared, whether we modern Friends have lost hold of that Life and Power.

Recently an email came into my inbox entitled: "Towards a testimony on Gun Violence." Oh how exciting I thought.  I opened it in anticipation of something that calls out in a similar way to the listener to forsake the violence of Guns.   Imagine my surprise when instead I read what I can only describe as a policy proposal for Friends to endorse existing proposals for gun registration.  I was quite disappointed.  Now mind you I have no objection whatsoever to gun registration; it is a logical and much overdue step.  Certainly it is strategically the next step this country could/should take.  But is it a Quaker Testimony? Certainly not.  In fact I was moved to write the committee writing the minute saying if it was presented at Yearly Meeting that I would most probably rise to oppose it as long as it used the word testimony because as such it violated my sense of what a testimony is.

I was raised with the understanding that our testimonies are different than creedal statements because they are statements of "the truth as we know it now."  I was told that the Truth is known experientially and that we struggle as a community to hold up to each other the truth and to find it together and reach unity on the Truth, that we act as a corporate body when we recognize together a shared Truth. Well Friends, it cannot be that the greatest truth we have after 350 years as pacifists is that guns should be registered!  When we say that we live in the Life and Power that takes away the occasion for all war...do we not also feel it takes away the occasion for violence?  Do we not feel that while we may fail, that we are called to live as nonviolently as we can?  I assume that means that little ol' Quaker ladies are not packing pistols in their purses, nor do Quaker men keep guns in the bedside table.   I think we are called to put our faith in God for safety and to live in ways that make no one intent on hurting us, and to speak to that of God in the stranger who may come with ill intent, and to suffer an injury if need be rather than to inflict one.  This, I believe, would be consistent with the Peace Testimony.  And in fact when we look at the first part that I quoted: "all outward wars & strife, & fightings with outward Weapons, for any end"  (emphasis added) it would seem pretty clear.   A gun is an outward weapon and it is rejected for all ends or means.

Now I realize that in proclaiming to the world that they should lay down their guns and try to live nonviolently that this will seem dangerous to some, laughable to others, way too idealistic to be "practical," a threat to the Second Amendment, etc.  But why should that stop us from proclaiming the truth?  After all the peace testimony itself is seen to be absurdly impractical and idealistic to most of the world and has for three and half centuries and that has not stopped us!  In fact, when we first suggested to the world that they give up slaves that was seen as unrealistic (something that we had first had work a century on within our own ranks) and yet it was useful to the world that we held out that idea, or the idea of women's suffrage, or same sex marriage.  Eventually the world sometimes catches up to idealists.  It still has not come to accept the idea that it is wrong to fight wars and yet I don't see us laying down that testimony any time soon.

So instead it is time to note that if a testimony is the "truth as we know it so far" that it is indeed now time to expand the peace testimony.  I think it is time for us to tell the world that we are called to that Life and Power that takes away the occasion for all violence against other humans.  That we utterly deny the use of any weapon against another child of God and that we are called to walk in struggle for understanding, love, and compassion which can lead us into peace with others when there is conflict.