Dancing with Trees

Do you have a tree you know personally?

I remember in grade school being taken on some sort of nature walk with my class where we were out in the woods.   The leader pointed to various trees and told us stories about them as if they were people:  “This one is an old granny who thinks…   This one is a young and willful child who wants to trip people by sticking out its root, etc.”  The she encouraged us to go up and down the path and find a tree that we understood its story.   For the next hour we took each other to various trees and told their stories.

As an adult many of the photos I have taken are of unique trees whose stories I feel.   Here are some examples:

These two trees became lovers young and grew up together and their lives are wound together and infact imbedded in each other.  When one dies the other will as well – they cannot live without each other.

This tree could not withstand the wind storm and finally let go of its hold on life, but it was caught in the arms of this younger tree who holds its mourning, apparently forever. 

       

This tree was touched by human love

This ancestor's life nourishes the next generation.

                                                                                               This off spring is a little "non-traditional".

This tree took what humanity threw at it and worked with it…undaunted.

My Meeting sits at the top of hill with a road that spirals up to the top through a grove of second growth, old growth – we look out the picture window at the beauty and grander of these trees.  Once, during a windstorm, if memory serves me right during Meeting for worship, one of the bigger trees came down…with a rather loud thud.   Someone gave ministry wondering what the other trees thought about this.   I have recently learned about mycelium, the white fibers that come off of roots.  Apparently science is learning that plants and trees communicate in some sort of way with each other through the mycelial path.   So in fact perhaps the trees did mourn for their elder who had died. 

 

Shortly thereafter one of the founding members of our Meeting died.   At the memorial someone recalled the big tree that come down and the ministry that had been given suggesting that the other trees were effected.  They likened this elder of the Meeting’s death to the loss the trees has suffered, changing the whole landscape.   At the time I felt concerned both that there are not enough young Quakers and that it seemed to me that we only had big old trees, no little trees.  Then I walked through the woods and discovered hundreds of little seedlings and was able to notice other 10 year saplings not that tall obscured by the bigger trees.  I realized “oh yes the big ones take up all the attention but the little ones are there quietly growing.”  I was reassured.

The trees of my Meeting

Recently the city told us the water pipes to our building our 50 years old and considered to small and to old and likely to leak and needing to be replaced.   They wanted us to give them eminent domain over a path from the road that would have cut through the property of one of our members who lives on the road and across part of our road.  They were going to cut down trees…about a dozen of these large old trees in order to accomplish this.

The first response of our group was to feel like “we had to”, for the practical reason of not getting a water leak.   But when I gently prodded us to examine this some more – was there no other way?  Were the pipes really at risk or just a “bigger and better” mentality,  was there a different path that would effect less trees, etc.  We began to slow down and ask more questions of the city.  It became clear the city planner who made the plan had never left his office, had just made the plan from a map – did not even know about these woods.  Our member on the street got an arborist to come out.  He told her among other things that it was thousands of dollars worth of trees and would detrimentally affect the woods.  He gave her a little courage to fight and when the Meeting learned she was going to, we said we would stand in unity with her.  So she and the clerk asked the city to come up with some other plan.  They then came up with the  plan of boring through the ground to get the pipe in which will not kill the trees!  (which I suspect will be equal or less than the cost of all that logging.) So the sillium of the woods are communicating their relief to each other.

I wish this were the end of the story, but it is not.  At the bottom of our spiral drive is a lot that a woman who was mentally ill lived in till the end of her life.  She did not care for her home, nor pay her taxes.  So the house needs to be torn down and the city seized it for back taxes last year.  We knew it would be sold and just hoped a developer would not buy it.  Around the time we thought to tell the real estate agent that we would oppose any development that took the trees on the property down…it was too late.   It was sold.   Nothing has happened for quite a while, and it was possible to forget about this.  I had imagined they would leave all the perimeter trees and take down the center of the plot ones to build.  But the member of our Meeting who lives on the street announced last Sunday that she had heard they were coming to cut them down…all of them.  I’m scared that the loss of about 1/6 of the entire woods will be such a shock to the surviving trees as to weaken and damage this whole interwoven forest eco-system.

over 3 centuries ago a philosopher named Descartes made treaties which much of western civilization was built upon, that said things like body and mind were separate, and earth and “man” were separate.  We are now facing a crisis so severe, climate change, that it threatens all life on the planet.  We arrived at this severe place out of just this Descartian error of viewing nature as separate from us: as something to use, to take advantage of, of something we had dominion over, or control over.   We failed to see ourselves as part of it or to understand that what we did to the earth we did to the host body of which we were one cell, one life form within a larger life form.   Regarding trees we have seen them as lumber (an object to use), scenery (something outside ourselves to view), or an obstruction to somewhere we were trying to get or to build and thus something to cut down/remove.  We have not seen them as part of our ecosystem, or as carbon sink protecting our air, or as living forms.  We most certainly have not seen them as personalities like my nature guide did. 

 

This weekend at Quarterly Friends Meeting we were invited in query to ask what if all life (not just humans) had a Light within?  For myself I know it would mean I could not just cut down a tree to suit my own purposes.  I have never understood people who chained themselves to trees and risked arrest to protect them, but I am starting to understand them.  But more profoundly I would have to learn to think about myself as part of network of life with reciprocal life relationships.

US party realignment

What? Politics?  This usually spiritual blog is about US presidential politics?   Well, yes. True confessions: your author was a poli sci major in college.   Quaker's are people who are deeply concerned about social concerns and social justice.   Who is elected president greatly effects us, and I have something to say about this that I have not seen any pundits saying.  (Amazing since they drone on endlessly about the elections, but usually saying little of actual substance or usefulness.)

The main thing I want to say is the reason this primary season has been so utterly bizarre is because the US is attempting to have a party realignment.  This has happened many times in our history, at least 5 times probably 6...usually about every 32 to 36 years.  So for example from 1792 -1824 we had two parties, neither of which exist now: the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans (what a party with the name of both current parties?)   The Federalist party came to be viewed as to elitist and died.  But at the time it did the Democratic- Republican party split into two new parties for the next 31 years: the Whig party and the Jacksonian Democrats.

It was the lead up to the Civil War and then the war itself that cause the next realignment.  The Whig parties leadership died out because they had splits between them. (sound at all familiar Republicans?) The Republican party was born out of the ashes of the Whig party and the first ever Republican president was Lincoln.   His legacy gave the party a lot of respect and legitimacy long after his death. At the same time the Jacksonian Democrats morphed into just the Democratic Party for a 36 year period of the third party alignment. Notice this is the 3rd set of two parties.   Now if you go just by names there have only been 3 realignments.   But most historians agree there have been a total of five or six realignments.  And you can tell that is true because if you think about how Lincoln conducted himself - if he came back now and had to pick a party....he would be a Democrat.  (For one thing the Republican strong hold is the South which would not have been friendly to his anti-slavery policies.)

So coming out of the reconstruction period, starting in 1896 was the next (4th) party realignment.   At this point in history the Republican strong hold was the North , some farm states and the NE (notice that is what the Democrats currently hold.)   This 4th alignment saw the rise of Labor who went to the Democratic party.  The Republican's heavily blamed the Democrats for the bank panics of 1893. Teddy Roosevelt was the very popular populist Republican President.  He was a Trust breaker and a conservationist - not positions we would not associate with Republicans.   But he became very upset by the policies of his former Vice-President, now elected President Taft.   He ran against him for the next election and when he lost in the primary, he ran as a third party candidate for the Bull Moose party (This will be like when Trump looses the brokered convention and then forms a third party which will be called the Trump party.   Bull Moose was an already existing nickname for Roosevelt.)  His running against Taft split the Republican party and the Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson was elected as the first Democrat since Lincoln in 50 years (other than a split two terms of Grover Cleveland).  Wilson was also helped by the fact that the Democratic party had solidified its hold on the south by disenfranchising most Black voters (tactics now familiar to us from the Republican party.)

When later FDR ran as a Democrat there was consternation on Teddy's Republican side of the family,but the truth was both Roosevelt's were tough against monopolies and graft and corruption and saw themselves as champions of the "little guy".   In fact Teddy was more progressive than the Republican party he has served as president for and his splitting of the party shifted more liberal members of the party to a Democratic party that elected Woodrow Wilson for 8 years.  Wilson's poor settlement of WWI ensured Republican victories until FDR was elected as a response to the Republicans disastrous handling of the economy resulting in the great depression.  Thus this fourth realignment shifted progressives to the Democratic party and left a more conservative Republican party.

So the 5th realignment began with the election of FDR, who was elected 4 times (there were no term limits then - those were passed after his presidency ended. But he died shortly into his 4th term.) Between his 12 years and his VP who served out his 4th term and was re-elected  this meant there was a Democratic lock for 20 years!   Dwight Eisenhower's 8 years as President was the only Republican serving during the 36 years of this 5th alignment - just as Grover Cleveland was the only Democrat to serve during the Republican 4th alignment till Wilson was elected by the disintegration of that formation of the Republican party.  During this 5th alignment the Democrats controlled the whole country other than the Republican farm states and the NE.

Not all historian's agree that the election of Nixon represented the end of the 5th alignment...some say we are still in the 5th and that it has been longer than all others.   Others argue that Lyndon B Johnson's disastrous handling of the Vietnam War and failure to bring it to an end - in combination with the continued big spending of the whole FDR 5th period caused voters to forsake the Democratic party and bring in Nixon.  The republican party had been split under the very conservative Goldwater half and the more moderate Rockefeller half.  Nixon appealed to both halves.  However, the civil rights movement under Johnson and Kennedy's administration enfranchised Black voters and moved them in as Democratic voters.  The conservative Christian right that surged during this whole 6th realignment moved the South from being a democratic voting block to being a republican voting block.

During this 6th realignment we have seen: 8 republican years (Nixon - Ford completing his second term) 4 Democratic Carter years, 12 Republican under Reagan followed by his VP Bush Sr, 8 Democratic years under Bill Clinton and then 8 Republican years under Bush jr. and now 8 years of Obama.   For a two party system this period has seen the greatest back and forth between parties of any previous alignments (besides possibly the third alignment).  What has gone on in these two parties in this time?  Reagan, the most clearly popular Republican president of this group took his party in a more progressive direction.   Clinton took the Democratic party in a more conservative direction with the dismantlement of the welfare system, doing away with the bank regulation of Glass-Steigal act which had been in place since the Great Depression and with the passage of NAFTA.   This is a direction that Obama has continued with the passage of a health care act that places insurance companies in the center and with his bail out of the banks and his attempts to pass TTP.  This sort of support of big business and selling out of the poor is frankly what one had come to expect of Republicans.

It is only since 1968 that we see the electoral map shift from the Democrats controlling the South to the Republicans controlling it and also from the NE being Republican controlled to becoming predominantly democratically controlled.  During this period we have seen approval ratings of Congress and both parties Presidents hit record lows as the public has become utterly disgusted by the grid lock created by the ugly fight tactics of both parties keeping them from getting anything done.  It is no wonder that the public is voting in droves for outsiders to both parties during these primaries.

So if the rise of the fundamentalism Christian voice inside the Republican party has given rise to the right wing Tea party republicans - splitting the Republican party so badly that the angry Republican voters actually are forsaking it for a party outsider: Trump, then we see the much decried implosion of the Republican party - into three branches - the far right tea party - the center party traditionalists and the vanquished Trump folks.  

However, the Democratic party is in no better shape.  The Clinton/Obama move to the right (in an attempt to respond to 12 years of Republican rule) has moved the party towards the center and Bernie Sanders, an actual democratic- socialist who has not identified ever as a Democratic, represents a far left of the traditional Democratic party.  So while the pundits have been happy to describe the implosion of the Republican party and wonder why Trump is popular and note some effect of the Tea party - they mostly just assume Hillary Clinton will continue the consolidation of the new more conservative Democratic party and win over the Republican mess. They however, have been too quick to ignore what Sanders represents and to ignore in general that America appears to be trying to enter its 7th Party alignment.  To the degree that the pundits see a three way race they see it as being between two Republicans and Hillary.   If that happens we will not have a party realignment - we will have the consolidation of more conservative Democratic party and a dangerously oligarchic moment with no real distinction between the Republican party we have had under the 6th alignment and the new Democratic party.

However, the exciting scenario under which a new party alignment could indeed take place is with a 4 way race! (Due credit to my daughter for first pointing out to me the possibility of a 4 way race.) Check out this scenario: In a brokered Republican convention the traditional party pushes out who they rightly see as a landslide loss scenario and then, being the narcissist he is, Trump refuses to quit and runs as an independent Trump party.   Bernie Sanders is right now on course to lose to Hillary in the primary by a very narrow margin.  The media keeps reporting that Hillary has won another state, but they fail to report the very narrow margins by which she wins most of those states.  There is still a very believable scenario by which Sanders could surpass her in more liberal states which are coming up - but if not, finish a very close second to her.   In a scenario where the Republicans actually give Trump the nominations, I believe that Sanders understands well enough the fascist threat of splitting a vote against Trump and he would defer to Clinton's nomination.  However, if the Republican party splits there is no reason on earth why Sanders should not run as an Independent which he truly is anyway.  The Republican convention is one week before the Democratic one.

What would happen in a 4 way race?  The Republican candidates would split the traditional (6th alignment) Republican strong holds which is where Clinton has also fared best...but she would not win those over Republican candidates.  Sanders has fared best in traditional (6th alignment) Democratic strong holds (Republicans that have won those in their primaries have already dropped out.)  Polls do show Bernie winning over Trump, but not Hillary wining over Trump.   And one could argue that in a 4 way race, it is really anyone's guess.   But one thing which is for sure is Americans would have more real and distinct choices than have happened certainly in my whole life time.   The other thing that is for sure is the results would be a party realignment.   Two years later would a Tea party be campaigning against a right leaning Democratic party?  Or would a Democratic Socialist party be running against a Democratic-Republican party?  Stay tuned for these and other exciting developments....Oh and go to the polls for Heaven's sake!

Faithfully Effective

At the Delta 5 trial in order to prove the necessity defense the 5 defendants were asked repeatedly to tell the other things they had done and to say whether these things were effective.  They said no they were not effective as that was part of proving that the act of breaking the law was necessary.  I think this is a very confusing message for our movement.

In reflecting upon this I think it is an incorrect question.  I think in fact that everything we do to fight climate change is somewhat effective and also not successful.   But I think the correct question was: but is it faithful?  

In facing the greatest moral challenge of our lifetimes we can only listen for God's guidance and be faithful.   Joanna Macy famously says: "We must realized that the ancestors, the descendants, and the other life forms on this earth and the earth itself are all trying to help us."   I was deeply moved when I heard Joanna say this.  I have struggled with the feeling of the weight on the world on my shoulders as we face this grave crisis.   But when I heard that I realized "hmmm yes why do I assume it is a human brain that will think of the solution or even create the movement for change?  Or that we can even recognize the solution as it emerges?"

When Shell was here in Seattle last year with their arctic rig - hundreds of people came out in their kayaks and tried to stop them.   They basically pushed us aside like flies and proceeded.  However they ran aground outside of Bremerton (while evading only 3 kayaks) and were stuck there for a few hours.  I could not help but think of Joanna and believe the earth itself had reached up and grabbed the rig.

Later their one required ice breaker, sprung a leak (apparently from ice slashing the steel) and therefore had to come back to Portland for repairs.   While they were there,was when the world watched them be delayed for several days by protesters dangling off the bridge stopping them from going forward.   The leak itself cost them several weeks, the protesters several days.   In the end their short window for drilling was shortened enough that they got only one hole drilled instead of two as they had planned.   And because of that their very expensive mission failed and they therefore have given up on arctic drilling.   In my mind the earth is helping us...the ice reached up and in its own act of vandalism, slashed, and said no!

It would seem to me therefore in God's universe it is unknowable what the outcome of climate change will be, but we all must be not so much effective as faithful in the fight against climate change because we do not know how life will act to protect life!

Quaker observer to the Delta Five Trial

This  is a picture of my friend Abby up in the tripod with my friend Patrick chained to the front leg, and my colleague Liz at the back left next to Jackie and to the right is Mike on Sept 2. 2014.  This week on most days of the weeks I joined about a 100 other supporters in attending the trial of the "Delta 5".  (Delta for the train yard their action took place in, and the scientific word for change.)   You see in my state the fossil fuel industry is trying to put record amounts of coal, oil and gas through our state on trains and pipelines in a desperate effort to get it to port.  The "carbon corridor" is opposed by the activist community because it would bring several times the amount of carbon to market than the long opposed and now dead XL pipeline would have thus posing a deadly climate threat.  Therefore, my friends constructed this tripod and sat in it for 8 hours blocking an exploding oil train.   We call them exploding oil trains because since they started in 2010 traveling with the more explosive crude Bakken shale (not the regular oil that use to ship) there have been regular derailments and explosions of these trains.  The most disturbing was the fireball that became the small town of Lac Megantic in Canada that incinerated 47 souls almost immediately and took out the downtown center of the town.  At least 3 of these trains roll through downtown Seattle under our city core everyday threatening to make it its own 911 catastrophe if one ever goes up.

When I first saw this photo it was small enough I could not see Abby's face, but the message of the sign so characteristically reaching out to the workers while opposing the trains, and smiling face and energy made me think "oh that person reminds me of Abby."  Hours later I was to realize why...because it was Abby.  So this week was their trial.

Last week they had submitted a brief asking to be able to use the defense of necessity.  The judge first said No in a 25 page brief.   But they asked him to reconsider.  Lawyers said this would never happen that judges don't reverse themselves.  After 20 minutes in his chambers the judge came out and said:  "I have recently in a talk said Judges need to use more humility.  I am going to allow necessity".   Necessity is an ancient defense that defendants in civil disobedience trials often try to use but are rarely granted.  It basically says:  It was necessary to break the law to prevent a greater harm."  This was a historic trial because it was the first time in the US that the necessity defense was allowed for a climate case.

The first day was spent on jury selection and opening statements.  I was disturbed as I always am by the farce of a "jury of your peers" since both the prosecutor and the defense were allowed to ask them questions "to get to know them" that included questions about their beliefs about protests, etc.  These values based questions quickly identified the left from the right and then out of a jury pool of 60 through a fixed number of exclusions it was widowed down to 6 jurors.

On the second day of the trial the prosecution speed through it case only calling half the witnesses they had said they would - primarily police and BNSF workers who identified the defendants as present on the tracks.  Then 4 of the defendants gave powerful opening statements explaining why they had acted as they had.  Unlike other cases I have seen for civil disobedience where the defendants are not allowed to say why they did any of the things they did because it is deemed not relevant, because of the necessity defense they were allowed to explain themselves.

The third day, possibly the most powerful 3 expert witnesses testified: Eric DePlace from Siteline explaining the whole carbon corridor situation, Richard Gammon a retired climatologist from UW who talked about just how urgent and dire the situation of climate change is, and then Abby who had not spoken the day before spoke.   Abby, so at home on top an 18 foot metal tripod talking by phone to reporters...suffered panic attacks while on the stand.  It was painful at times to watch her struggle to get out what she wanted to say, and yet still she managed to tell them of the years of intense activism she had done to try to stop climate change, relationships she had forged with rail workers and even show a letter she had received from Barrack Obama answering one from her.  She told of the profound impact it had on her to learn of the whistle blower who testified the next day and how when a train derailed (thankfully not leaking or blowing up) 1 mile from her daughter's school (thus in the blast zone) she knew it was the last straw for her.  The final expert was Fred Millar, a rail safety expert who spoke powerfully about how unsafe these trains are and how if they burn all the fire fighters can do is get out of the way.

On the 4th day Mike Elliot a former BNSF employee told about being fired for checking the breaks of his train. (the Lac Megantic explosion took place because the breaks failed and the train, unmanned moved forward till it derailed and exploded.)  Then Dr. Frank James testified about the health impacts from the trains - how 1 to 2% of the oil does not make it from its original location to its destination because the train leaks all along the way and how carcinogenic the oil is - studies linking it to cancer.  The case had been laid out so powerfully that one began to wonder how the jury could possibly find them guilty.   But there were several twists ahead.

After lunch the judge explained to everyone's surprise that he was not going to allow the necessity defense.   He explained there were 4 legs - the first 3 he felt were met: 1) that there was a threat greater than the threats caused by breaking the law 2) that you were not the cause of the threat  3) that the threat was a real and compelling one.  But the 4th one he said was not met was that you had exhausted all possible legal remedies.   This one aggravates me because while you could again call 911 while a building was burning rather than break in to get someone...there is not time.   We are in just such a burning building where there is not time for the slow and tortured path of legislative change.

The mood of the supporters in the court room was somber indeed as the judge read a very narrow set of instructions to the jury, telling them they could consider none of the expert witnesses and essentially eviscerating their defense.  Defining the two charges against them of trespass and obstructing a train.  Telling them they could not act out of emotion, but that they needed to put all emotion aside (Ahhh that old Decartian frame which has so bent and destroyed our world - that mind and body, that heart and mind are separate.) The prosecutor basically said in his closing you can do nothing but find them guilty, they all admitted they trespassed and reading again from the narrow and confining jury instructions.   However, the defense attorney, Peter Goldstein was very skillful in opening up the idea that if the founding fathers had not broken the rules of Britain we would not have a free US, that there are times for dissent and that no one would have said to Mr. Jefferson on the stand "why did you not petition the parliament more."   He then also pointed doubt on to the idea that the trains were obstructed and to the idea that their intent was not to break the law but to use free speech.   The jurors later told us this gave them the toe hold they were desperately looking for to set the protesters free of at least that charge.  The prosecutor again repeated that they had no choice, but to convict before they went to chose a foreperson before ending for the day.

Today the jury took about 90 minutes.   I was quite surprised to hear the verdict read out of not guilty on the charge of obstructing the train and guilty of trespass for all 5.   They proceed to sentencing after the jury was relieved of duty and after the prosecutor said what he was asking for there was a break so the defendants could confer with their lawyers.   But then the most magical thing of all happened 3 of the jurors came in the hall to talk to the defendants and insisted on staying for the sentencing to see what would happen to the defendants that they had come to care about.   They told us how they had not wanted to find them guilty of anything and felt they were good people trying to act to protect everyone.  They said how emotional it was for them and how hard it was to put aside their emotions.  They hugged the defendants (see below) and this amazing bit of dialogue is captured and posted on 350Seattle.org's web site under the date of 1/15/16.  (story continue below)

For me what happened in the hall was so magical as to take away the sting of the judge giving the sentence the prosecutor asked for 90 days suspended for two years of probation, plus fines.  I have to say that these 5 defendants while not Quaker, are gentle and loving people who conducted themselves in such a manner and required the supporters to treat everyone in the whole court house with nothing but respect and kindness.   The judge, unlike all previous judges I have encountered also treated everyone in the courthouse with kindness and respect.   Thus the environment of  the entire trial was unlike any CD trial I have ever been to.  Even the judge spoke of learning from the defendants and respecting that they were acting because political solutions were coming to slow.  He however still felt he had to prevent "further crime" by putting them on a long probation.

We Quakers talk of speaking to that of God in others and the power of that to transform the world "let us see what love can do".   This for me was a week of witnessing exactly that.  The response of the jurors (including to promise to become active against climate change). was for me a very powerful example of Love and Truth transforming hearts even against the oppressive power of the state.

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!