Spiritual but not Religious - the "none's and Quakerism.

I am aware as a therapist that many people consider themselves spiritual, but not religious.   I in fact have listened to people long for a spiritual home, but feel thwarted as to how to find such a thing.  In asking them questions about what it is they want, I often privately feel that they are describing Quakerism (and of course as their therapist it is not appropriate to try to present that to them.)  But they will say things like “I want community with other people who believe in God”.  “I want a place without dogma – where you can believe, but not be told what to think.”  “I want a place that takes action for social justice.”  And so forth.

Because of my feeling that Quakers need to learn how to do outreach to just such people, I got last year the book: Belief without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious by Linda Mercadante.  She presents to us the fairly well know truth that the religion in America hit its high point in the 1950s with only 3% not affiliated with a religion, but that a huge decline began in the 60’s and 70’s.  Until by 2010  46 million Americans, or 1/5^th of all Americans had no religious affiliation.  (This is not across the board, some religions with immigration are actually growing in the US, as are evangelical religions.) Estimates vary from 1/3 to ¾ of young adults not choosing a church.  Increasingly young adults have not been raised with any religion, decreasing the likelihood of their choosing a church in adulthood.  65% of young adults have never attended a church service.  And there is more change of affiliation (2 or 3 times) for adults who are in religion than in previous generations.  And yet 90% of Americans, Gallop polls show still believe in God.

Certainly for many, many centuries of human history religion was the only game in town in terms of explaining why the world was the way it was.  With the rise of science there is another game in town for explaining the world.  But this also loosed the grip of superstition and the use of fear to keep people in churches.   The idea that one would fail or be outcast or die in hell all have loosened as religion became less prominent.   So if we assume that it is good that people who previously belonged to religions for those bad reasons no longer do, that still does not address the huge number of people who do not belong to a church because the obvious ones they know about are a wrong fit and they don’t have a good way of finding the right religion.  More Americans describe themselves are spiritual but not religious (SBNR) than ever. They are the "nones" the ones who write none on the checkbox that ask for religious affiliation. If they are seeing themselves as seekers, Quakerism as the original faith of seekers should be a good home for them.

Mercandante’s research shows that the SBNR very much reject dogma and see it as harmful.  If one reviews the history of religion, such chapters as the Inquistion and the many religious wars, the persecution of or discrimination against individuals for religious beliefs; it is no surprise that people would come to this conclusion.  Again it would seem that Quakerism offers a helpful stance here saying that we have no dogma or doctrine but that we engage in a lifelong search for the truth and can offer what we have found so far in the form of testimonies.  SBNR’s similarly believe that all religions have found the same core truths, and they see mystics of all traditions as transcending the specific practices they utilized.  SBNR folks tend to reject the title of religious, which they see as entangled in the downsides of churches, and favor the term spiritual instead.

Mercandante's interviewees she divided into 5 generational groups: the Great Generation (born 1901-1924), the Silent Generation (1925-1945), Baby Boomers (1946-1964), Gen X (1965-1981), and the Millennials born after 1981..  Both the Great Gen and the Silent Gen were pretty universally raised in some sort of church and would choose some sort of church because it was fairly unheard of to not do so.  The Silent Gen was more capable of leaving religion for spirituality - integrating what they had found.  Baby boomers were the largest group interviewed and where the largest percent of those who identified as SBNR.  They also tended to have been raised in a church and to remember that fondly. Their generations general tendency to question authority and to explore ideas and possibilities which made them spiritual seekers.  

The Gen X's were born into this cultural revolution and their parents tended not to raise them in churches - (less than half had formal religious upbringing) or to the expose them to a potpourri of possibilities which they found confusing.  They were left to make their own decisions and affiliations and most simply did not.  This generation is much less likely to feel a lack of religion and is also concerned for intellectual integrity in what they believed.  They can also come to religions with an open mind and with less preconceived notions.  Mercandante interviewed the smallest number of Millennials because she notes they were the least interested even in the idea of her project.  More than half had grown up with divorced parents which seemed to contribute to their not having been brought to church - even less of them had been raised in a Church than the Gen X folks.  She says:  "For this generation, they took for granted that they could affiliate or not, believe or practice whatever they wanted, or nothing at all, with little or not repercussions."  They seem however to have less theological concepts to even guide a search for religion.

Mercandante wound up categorizing all her participants (regardless of generation) into 5 categories: 1)Dissenters - those who either in protest, drifting or conscientious objection left the church.

2)Casuals - those who engage spirituality on a casual or "as needed" basis.  They taste or dabble across a wide spectrum and are not concerned about theological mismatch.  Half of all Millennials fell into this category.

3) Explorers- those with spiritual wanderlust - driven by spiritual curiosity and the desire for novelty.  She sees them as spiritual tourists who enjoy the journey but do not plan to settle anywhere.

4) Seekers are those she sees as actually seeking a spiritual home- these are the church shoppers (and whose stance most closely align with the Quaker belief that the Truth must be sought.)  She says "I heard a spiritual longing they could just barely define or articulate."   However she also says: "Religious leaders often assume that everyone experiencing with spiritual practices is a seeker.  In my work, I found fewer seekers than religious leaders hope for, but more than some research might predict".  She also points out that the highest percentage of seekers are Baby Boomers (1 in 4) or Gen Exers (1 in 5).  They are often looking for "believable" beliefs, rituals that consistently provide 'liminality', a trustworthy group, and good personal 'fit'.  

5) Immigrants are her final group: those who actually convert to a new religion.  She comments on how difficult most found this path to be.

A future post will again pick up on insights from Mercandante's work, but it clearly serves as a useful reference point for Meetings trying to do outreach.  It is helpful for us to put in perspective that we are part of the "Protestant mainstream decline" in church going folks and that the very obvious decline in Quaker membership is not specific to Quakers, but is part of an overall trend in the US where 25% of people do not have any church affiliation and where increasingly young people are being raised without church.  It is also probably noteworthy (but not particularly encouraging) to realize that Baby Boomer and Gen X's are the ones most likely to be actually seeking a Friends Meeting.   But bottom line it is important to realize that for those who are seeking we do in fact have that which they describe to be the picture they are seeking.

Listening to the Still Small Voice: Returning to Faithfulness - a guest blog

Guest Blogger:  Alice 

My daughter wrote this for a class assignment in a dance class where they were asked to do something kind for their bodies.   It is a writing about going beyond your light, and coming back to Center. Lynn

               I didn’t know this was my something kind until I did it, and perhaps this is counter-intuitive, but here it is: I quit “Megawatt” the PILOBOLUS dance piece that I’ve been a part of since August. It started by trying to set a boundary with my rehearsal director about tech on Sunday, that I need to go to Quaker Meeting for Worship and that is not something I’m willing to sacrifice as I have already sacrificed so much for this piece. I didn’t mean when initiating this conversation to withdraw from the whole thing. However, this statement lead to a conversation about how I’ve been feeling all semester. I ended up telling him that doing this work has been really hurting my heart in addition to my body, I was crying because authority figures intimidate me and it was an uncontrollable nervous bodily reaction. He reacted by saying we would phase me out. This was a surprise, but welcome as I had been considering leaving the piece for the spring. More importantly than the details of my exit: the reason.

                I was born, raised, and am a practicing Quaker. My faith has taught me to do nothing but listen to the “still small voice” inside us each, the fraction of God in each of us. And I believe that part of our collective job on this planet right now is learning how to listen to and follow ones heart/intuition. On the day of the PILOBOLUS audition the company members told us all about their philosophy of work, of pushing and going, of bigger and better. And that small voice whispered, and I shut my ears. As I went home that day my head was hurting, I was dizzy, and I was out of it. I was worried I was concussed. My body was speaking. In the intensive week one of the company members, whom I loved and appreciated dearly, told us horror stories of the things he and other company dancers have done in the name of this work. My small voice asked, “what for?” I left those 6 hour long days, with my head and body throbbing. My body was screaming. And I didn’t listen. My heart and body kept speaking throughout the process and I kept ignoring- I kept being unfaithful. I won’t recount all the greater impacts this had on other aspects of my journey. But finally there was no choice, but to listen.

I have been taught my whole life to listen. And I know that so much of my calling and work in this lifetime is about dismantling the paradigms of pushing and going, of bigger and better. Those paradigms are the narratives that have driven the colonization of the Earth and its Peoples. That is a mind frame that I cannot create or embody art within, because I make art to CREATE. I have watched this work destruct, many dancers, in different ways. And those convictions that I hold so deep could not stay hushed by my sense of loyalty to a previous commitment, or by a sense of obligation. 

When I came home that night one of my dear friends, who I meditate with often and knows my heart in a tender way looked at me and said, “Alice you look lighter, you look so much less stressed out.” He’s been asking me all semester in random moments, for reasons unapparent to me “are you okay? You looked stressed.” And I’ve always denied, not only to him, but myself. I asked him how he knew, and he told me it’s in my body language.  And that's how I knew this was my physical research.  My body is responding with relief, and the headaches I've been experiencing after every rehearsal during this process left.  My heart lightened.  And I feel the presence of the Divine in a way I alarmingly have missed for a long

time. I feel freedom.  

Out running Your Light: a Confession

Recently I was watching a tv show where a lapsed Catholic went into the confession booth and said: “Forgive me father for I have sinned, it’s been 13 years since my last confession.  I have…”  After a life time of just finding the concept of confession odd (probably because I did not and still don’t believe in sin) I watched this scene with a certain envy.   It seemed like a comforting idea to be able to go somewhere and confess that you have strayed from your connection from God, and to ask to have that connection restored.   I guess readers’ you will hear this Quaker’s confession.

Quakers have a historic concept of outrunning one’s leading, or one’s light – as I have explained in a previous post.   In that post I explain the idea that God can give us a leading but that Quaker’s of old had a clearness committee or now called anchor committee of elders appointed to support their ministry.   These elders were to hold them accountable and be a source for them to turn to for grounding so the ministry would not wander from its source, and become ego driven or over taken by worldly considerations.  The phrase out running one’s leading or light meant that you tried to do more than you were given light or divine direction about.

Two and half years ago I founded a chapter of a climate change organization in the city I live in.  I had been operating under a leading to do climate change work for years, and the way the pieces fell together to start the group was also very clearly a leading.  It had all the hallmarks of way easily falling into place, doors opening before you could even ask, etc.  In the first year of the group we did amazing stuff and I had the peace and contentment one has when on the proper path.  The inner leadership of the group was an odd assortment of personalities, but I felt a little like Jesus who had collected a strange assortment of fisherman, prostitutes, and sinners, as his inner circle with which to do amazing work.  (I did not feel like Jesus, just to be clear, only that my process of collecting people felt as random.) 

But then to my heartbreak the infighting started.   Because I knew I had been lead to create this group and because I could already see the powerful difference the group could/did make I instinctively felt protective of it.   I would argue and fight with those on our leadership team who I felt were taking us in the wrong direction.   I only ever had 20 to 25 hours a week to spend on the group, while some members were spending 40+ hours on it.   So in my free time (the 20 to 25 hours) a week I would rush like a mad person – to the extent that my closest friend said in exasperation one day “No Lynn, it is not just getting through this up coming action/event…perhaps you have not noticed you have been going at this pace for over a year.  Being over busy is a form of spiritual disobedience.”  I heard her, but I still felt caught on a treadmill I could not exit.

As I prepared to write this blog I see the previous blog about outrunning one’s leading written a whole 10 months before.  I see the one I wrote about giving testimony where I recognize that I had spoken cleverly while giving public testimony,but not as lead.  In my July blog post I even spoke about my realizations that the ways in which I have learned to do Quaker process do not work well outside of Friends Meetings – and that was one of the many struggles I was having on how to be a faithful Quaker doing this work in a secular setting.  I go on to say: "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 I did not do that.  Why?   This is not an excuse, but it is true.   Like many Meetings in America right now mine is of shrinking size.   The active members struggle to take care of a Meeting House, and to do pastoral care for our aging members increasingly in ill health.   How do I ask an over stretched Meeting to create an anchor committee for me?  But I am clear now that for any future climate work I do that I will have to…or again I will be over extended beyond my light.

So I sort thought about my experience as that I and one of the leadership were having a lot of fights.   (Looking back I wonder why I did not look for that of God in her despite her atheism.) I failed to notice till the very end that it was actually a power struggle.   That she was trying to pull certain things away from me, to go around me, and to minimize my position as coordinator of the group.   I reacted instinctively to protect, to defend, to deflect which I thought just meant I was always being pulled into conflict, but really meant I was in the power struggle just defensively and unconsciously so.  My brain was increasingly trying to figure out what to do, how to counter her next move…caught in a big chess game – something which in no way resembles a faithful walk.  

Increasingly, I was wearing armor whenever I was engaging my leadership team, which due to email meant many times a day in my own home.  When you have to put on armor that many times a day, it eventually does not come off. Thankfully, I can say I never became mean, vindictive or attacking.  But at some point I realized that I was becoming a different person because I was living inside my armor with my heart locked away, becoming a person I did not want to be. When it reached its height I walked away and left rather than demand that everyone take sides and engage in an all-out war.  Which meant I took the pain, and the loss on myself…and that I got to take the armor off.

Why was I outrunning my light?  I was returning to activism after a several decades long break to raise my child.  Activism was from a time in my life where mostly I did secular activities – my faith-life strongest in other times of my life.  These two parts of me existed separately and without integration.  I was lead to start a secular organization – a puzzling thing from the start.   But I don’t live on the East coast in a thicket of Quaker population.  There were in fact in my whole large city no Quaker’s I could even pull into my secular group.  Like so many Quakers whose work life takes place in a secular setting I just saw this as a natural development, but not as a danger to faithfulness.  And I think perhaps if I had done it a different way, it could have been done faithfully.  Looking back I can notice I would have needed to pray about everything I did, all my own personal decisions made within my group.  And I know I would have to have an anchor committee.

Right now I am in spiritual recovery.  I am slowing down enough to be able to hear a still small voice again.  I have stepped away from my group so that the chess game in my head will finally shut off.  I am noticing the nudges I had, but was completely distracted from by choosing other paths that the power struggle required.  I am divesting of tasks I took on out of duty or responsibility, but not out of leading.  I am deciding that like Quakers of old that would come to a cross roads and wait until they discerned which way to go, that I can take steps slowly and wait for the next step till I have Light.  Because while the planet melting has urgency, God’s timing is always deliberate and perfect. I am re-deciding that I will move at a pace that includes self-care, play and fellowship even if it means I get “less done.”  I suspect less will become more; that what I will do will be more effective.  Certainly if God is in charge it will be!

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.