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!

Mary Dyer's husband

I have a personal sort of relationship to Mary Dyer.   The above famous statue of her was created by Sylvia Shaw Judson, a member of the meeting I grew up in.   A small 2 foot high study that Sylvia had made sat in the entry way to my Meeting.  When I went to Earlham College there was 1 of 3 bigger than life size sculptures of Mary outside the Meeting house - allowing me to get a picture of myself in her lap.  When I look in her face I see Mary Stickney, a member of my Meeting who was the model for the sculpture.  A few years later while in Boston I had this picture taken with Mary. The third and last statute of Mary is at Quaker Center in Philadelphia.  So it has always felt like I  had a personal appreciation for Mary for her courage and as the most famous Quaker martyr in our history.

For those not familiar with the story of Mary Dyer.  Mary was a convinced friend in Puritan Massachusetts during colonial times.  Massachusetts forbade any form of worship but Puritanism, but Mary and many Friends continued to meet for worship.  Eventually she and William  Robinson and Maraduke Stephenson were sentenced to die by hanging for persisting in this practice.  On the gallows the governor stayed her execution and ordered her banished while hanging her two companions.  Mary, feeling still under the command of the leading returned to worship in Boston and to her most likely death.    She was again sentenced to hang and this time did.   This story is well known to most Quakers (and even most American's who paid attention in HS US history class.)

Part of why it is so well known is the amazing quotes from Mary.   She is widely quoted as saying to the marshalls who came to take her to the gallows: "Yea, and joyfully I go. My life is not accepted, neither availeth me, in comparison with the lives and liberty of the Truth and Servants of the living God for which in the Bowels of Love and Meekness I sought you; yet nevertheless with wicked Hands have you put two of them to Death, which makes me to feel that the Mercies of the Wicked is cruelty; I rather chuse to Dye than to live, as from you, as Guilty of their Innocent Blood."

This of course is what always grabbed me about Mary, the joy in her faithfulness, the calm in the face of her own death, the witness to a truth greater than her own life, and a groundedness in the power of God to cause her to go in this spirit to join God.  In fact, I recently heard a Quaker who went to see this statue on the Boston commons, ran into other tourists who were the descendants of Edward Wanton, one of the marshalls who was from their account (and history's) was so moved and awe struck by the power of the palpable spirit present in Mary at her death that he was lead to explore Quakerism and eventually himself become a Friend.

So I must confess that until this month the only thoughts I have had about Mary were admiration for her courage and powerful life of the spirit.  I had a similar reaction to stories about Tom Fox, the modern day Quaker who was traveling with Christian Peacemakers in Iraq with two companions and was kidnapped by Al-Queda and eventually beheaded.   Tom was a peacemaker acting on a leading for peace in the middle east.  He was also deeply loved in his yearly meeting and especially among the Young Friends for whom he had served as a Friendly Adult Presense for a decade.  While horrified, like most people, by the fact that he was beheaded, and deeply saddened by what seemed like the misguidedness of killing what was in reality one who came to help.  I felt primarily proud of the way this Quaker had lived his life.  Later, I came to know some of those who grieved deeply for him and did think about the unintended fall out of one faithfully following a leading.

I have in the past looked more seriously at this "underside" of a leading in the case of Norman Morrison who self-immolated himself at age 31 underneath Robert McNarma's office window in 1965 in protest of all the loss of innocent life in Vietnam.  This caused quite a stir at the time in national media because while people had started getting use to Buddhist monk's immolating themselves in protest of the war, no American had before or after.  I was too young to be aware of his death at the time, but Quakerism was still talking about it when I was old enough to understand. Norman was a Quaker; there had been no clearness committee.   Was this an act of witness or an act of suicide?  But most troubling to me, always, was that Norman had the youngest of his three children, Emily a toddler with him, who he had at the last moments passed off to someone before lighting himself on fire.    As a therapist I can only be horrified at the trauma that surely had to create for his youngest even as she was too small to fully understand the event, and the pain that I instinctively understand was caused to a widow and her three small children.  His wife Anne refused to speak publicly about it for years, not wanting to diminish the witness that he paid for with his very life, but eventually writing a book about it that revealed her deeply conflicted feelings about it and the pain and loss that she lived with.  As a therapist I cannot help but notice the similarities to suicide completers who are wrapped in their pain to the point that they cannot consider the impact and pain caused to their family and friends left behind.

I have always been a big fan of leadings and looked at them as gifts from God and important missions to be carried out in the world.  However, recently when my 18 year old daughter has been called to a series of civil disobedience actions that if gone text book would involve nothing more than an arrest, but if gone wrong could involve serious physical injury if not death....I began to notice the underside of leadings.   There is no promise that God makes that we will be safe, or even alive.   If we are content, as Mary was, to go to our death in God's arm than there is that blessing, but there is no certain protection.   Somehow as I have realized this something has gone a bit upside down in me regarding leadings and the admiration of faithfulness.

Suddenly I have asked myself "what about Mary Dyer's husband?"  I knew Mary was married, but it is with surprise that I realize I had never considered what did he go through? how did he feel?  In the two more contemporary cases mentioned above, I have given it some thought because of hearing Friends who knew the individuals talk of the pain of the families.   In Tom's case I still felt it was faithfulness, in Norman's I have more questioned whether mental illness wore the cloak of leading? So I was moved to do some research about Mary's husband.  William himself was not recorded as a Friend.  I learned that the first time she was sentenced to hang he wrote the Governor begging for her life, and it is widely believed that this is indeed why she was spared.   He did indeed write the gov. the second time as well, but this time his request was not granted.   Interestingly, in the second letter to the govenor he said of his wife's actions  "it is a kind of madness".  Which has left me to wonder: martyr or crazy person? Two sides of the same coin?  Simply a point of perspective?  It is after all often said that the line between spirituality and madness is a thin line.   Emotion and spirituality dwell in the same part of the brain.

As my daughter said:  "but the families are not given the same leading"   Thus I am left to wonder why we never talk about William, Mary Dyer's husband....and how do we as Friends given adequate attention and support to the loved one's of those who are lead into dangers way.  Among early Friends when one was called to ministry outside of their community, in confirming the leading the Meeting was agreeing to provide support to their family: to come bale the hay and watch the children, etc. Meetings gathered funds for suffering for those who were arrested for worshipping in the manner of Friends.   But what support could possibly be have extended to a martyr's husband that could mend his wounds?

However, the reason Mary is so famous in American history is that it widely believed that it was the two forks of those who had come to the colonies to escape religious persecution in their countries of origin, and then the playing out of this same persecution against other American in the Massachusetts colonies, against Mary and her 2 Quaker companions, that lead the founding fathers to include freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights of the American Constitution.   So it is not a hard argument to make that the Mary was lead to an act that would change history for the protection of thousands over centuries to come.  Something to take joy in indeed and a rich accomplishment of a lifetime.   Maybe it does take a certain kind of madness to over come the survival instinct and to make one's entire life's meaning about a certain witness?

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.

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.

Not Outrunning One's Light

Quakers have a saying about not out running a leading or outrunning one's Light.  This is kind of like advanced math, in order to understand it you have to be able to understand some basic things about leadings to begin with.  While other religions do have some similar beliefs like believing ministers will receive a "call" to a congregation or to a certain work, I believe (perhaps with bias) that Quakerism has a more complex and developed tradition around leadings than other faiths, This is complete with a clearness committee process designed to help us properly discern if we are "led" or not.

Embedded in our traditions around both clearness process and around elders for a ministry (now commonly called an anchor committee) is the idea that in addition to the danger of not properly discerning an initial leading from a thought, or from ego, or the danger of not acting on a leading, is the danger of out running the leading.  What this means is to have an initial leading and set off on that undertaking only to become distracted by ego, or to have the thinking/planning mind sort of take over the leading and remake it in its own non-divine image.   In some cases it can simply mean that the person has become burned out or completed in the ministry and needs to acknowledge this and lay down the leading before it becomes forced or empty.

This was a hard thing for me to learn about as a young woman full of excitement and enthusiasm for the work of the spirit.  I remember serving on a clearness committee when I was 22 for someone who was about 10 years my elder.   She had a leading to do something.   To me that was enough I was ready to say Yes!   But the other older, wiser members of the clearness asked other questions:  What about her husband?  How did he feel about it ?(not supportive it turned out)  They were almost entirely dependent upon her income - how would the family manage if her income was cut back?  (Seems she did not have clarity about that part.)  The other members of the clearness committee wound up saying that they did not sense that this was the right time for her leading.   I felt frustrated and annoyed: was being married a dis-qualifier for leadings?  Was it her fault her husband was unsupportive?  Would God care about that? The fact that he sort of lived off her felt to me like a really unfair reason to say the finances were not right at this moment, etc.

However, as it unfolded her husband turned out to have cancer.  He became quite sick in the next year (the time she had been contemplating traveling with a ministry) and required her nursing till his death.  In retrospect it became completely clear that her clearness committee had indeed been correct that it was not the right timing.  Also as an older hopefully more mature person it now also becomes clear to me that while "not fair" to have marital issues interfere with spiritual work, it is indeed true that they do interfere, that it is indeed necessary to get our "house in order" before we can undertake a spiritual work.

Another story about the timing of a leading is a story from John Woolman's own journal where he writes about a strong leading he felt to go to the Barbados to minister to Friends there who held slaves.   He purchased in advance the ticket for passage on a ship and traveled down to the port it was to leave from.  However, arriving at the port he had a strong sense of the leading as having been completed and so did not sail but turned around and went home!  When I first heard that story I was again non-plussed on the level of getting stuff done in the world.   And I must confess it certainly opens one up to looking very crazy to one's friends and neighbors!   However, from a faith perspective I'm awe struck with the faithfulness of remaining listening not just after the initial urge to go and the initial steps were set in motion for going, but at each step.   I'm also awed by the faithfulness to lay it down, regardless of how that looked, when he no longer felt the inner prompting!

In a similar example of my own impatience of youth, a woman moved to the Meeting I grew up in and was led to first have a clearness committee and then out of that ask the Meeting to record her as a minister.  She indeed had great gifts of ministry. This caused a great uproar in my Meeting. It is a fact that all throughout Quaker history that Friends with a gift of ministry were so recorded, and were recorded with a leading to travel to minister with a certain message.  Examples ranging from "how we will stay low" (meaning not in ego) to the vanity of lace!  But despite these facts, no one had been recorded with a gift of ministry in my Yearly Meeting probably because of the conflict over "paid ministry" which was at the heart of the splits in Quakerism.

So some Friends in my Meeting found her request quite threatening or audacious.  Others saw it as simply a historic footnote and could see no current relevance of doing such a thing.  The Meeting discussed her request but did not reach consensus on it.   To me if God had lead her to this then I felt there would be a long struggle in my Meeting to get others to understand this.  But to my great surprise she announced that she had been faithful to the leading she had been given to her and that she found no further Light to proceed further and thus was content to lay the matter down.   I remember feeling disappointed by this at the time, however, now I can again look in awe a the careful faithfulness to discern that the leading was complete.  As I left home at that time I was not there to observe how this course of action may have impacted my Meeting or the woman who asked.   But I'm sure that in someway it did because I believe the Creator always has a magnificent intent without accident!

Completing the work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr Day.   Much will undoubtedly be written about 50 years after key civil rights legislation and the sadly still needed “Black Lives Matter” movement which is happening right now.  For me this is the logical falling out of the fact that Martin Luther King Jr did not get to finish his work before he was taken from this earth.  I have little patience for those who simply want to say it is evidence that we have not gotten very far.   This is a superficial understanding of institutional racism and the violence that interrupted attempts to get to its root.

In the past year I have heard Tavis Smiley give an hour long talk on his book Death of a King: The last 365 days of Martin Luther King, Jr.,  and I have just seen the movie Selma.   Smiley makes the point that after King came out against the Vietnam War his popularity took a huge hit.   Many people felt he was “going too far” and that he was “off topic” by talking about the war.   If you have never heard or read the talk King gave on the war I encourage you too because his words were nothing short of prophetic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b80Bsw0UG-U  It will be 25 minutes well spent!  

King very deftly ties in the role of capitalism in the oppression of poor people of all races.  He uses the term revolution which won him a death sentence with the powers that be.   He was increasingly clear in the last year of his life that we would have to change the economic classism of our society if the role of Black people in US society was really to change.  He was in fact in Memphis to support the garbage collectors at the time of his death because he was trying to focus on the economic struggles of the poor.  I encourage people to follow the activities of Smiley and Dr. Cornwall Davis as they have taken up in their previous Poverty Tour, the task of calling American’s to complete the uncompleted work of MLK on economic equality!

King’s message was radical and that is why he suffered huge criticism and shunning at the end of his life even from people who had been his supporters.   He states in the speech that he “agrees with Dante that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in a time of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.   There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”  As someone who is a climate activist these words remain timeless to me as they so well apply to our current crisis which people remain silent about.  It is also ironic because as Smiley well documents many followers betrayed him by being silent, not defending him against the verbal targeting in the difficult final year of his life. 

One of my favorite parts of his Vietnam speech is where he says he finds it amazing that the same people who praise him for calling for non-violence in the face of the violence of white man, Bull Connar, would condemn him for calling for an end to US violence against the brown skinned people of Vietnam.  Here Martin encounters the same experience that Quakers have for centuries that our call for non-violence is ignored or found amusing until we make the call to our own country to disarm at which point we are treated as traitors.   But in the point he is making there and elsewhere in the speech where he talks about the colonization of Vietnam, he is decades ahead of his time in pointing to the colonial  and violent roots of racism!

While it has been known in movement circles for years that The FBI had MLK watched all the time (apparently his own photographer was on the payroll of the FBI), his phone tapped, and deliberately put women in his path to seduce him and then sent tapes of him with the women to his wife to weaken his marriage – it was surprising to me to see a mainstream movie actually acknowledge that.  I see within the social justice movement and public in general when people wonder what harm it is that the govt has recently revealed it has all our phone records…that we have forgotten our history.  We have forgotten how the govt has used people’s personal information to target them when they dissent.

I appreciate about both Tavis’ book and the movie Selma their efforts to help those of us who lived through the civil rights movement and those who have been born since to not forget our history.   Many people believe the Republican talking line that we have “outgrown” the need for the Voting Rights act.  Perhaps when people can see the great sacrifices that were made by African Americans in order to win the vote and the deep systemic attitudes and practices that created obstacles to voting, then it can be understood why things like requiring id to register to vote just starts again the creation of obstacles for the poor to prevent voting.

When I hear people responding to Black Lives Matter by thinking that the solution is simply to indict police officers who have shot black citizen’s I again feel that there is a lack of understanding of the deeply rooted racism.   Yes they should be held accountable, but that is a bandaid after the wound.  We must first understand the deep fear and “otherness” that racism creates that makes officers quick on the draw and quick to pull the trigger.  Only when we complete Martin’s work will we make America safe for Black people.