Plain in the city

Tell Pharaoh, Let His People Go...

2010-03-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

No Richard, thee is not Pharaoh. Pharaoh is the culture of greed, the culture of blind consumption. I am not Moses, I am only a Quaker. Moses was not Moses, he was a Jew who listened to the voice of God within telling him to speak truth to power.

In the past, we Quakers built great institutions through the process of unity. We did so well, we built institutions for others. We had elders, not leaders. Decisions were made in unity for the common good.

Today, Pharaoh has nearly completely taken those institutions away from us, but, the small week grasp we have on out past offends this culture of elitism, of greed, of exigency, of me first and last. So, Pharaoh attempts to make us feel small by the dazzle of golden idols such as the respect out school has in the hierarchy of the culture of Mammon.

Then, to dazzle and confuse further, Pharaoh twines away some of the faithful, teaches new dances, which distract most of the children of light from the reality of their former power, power in their faith rather than power granted in small parcels by Pharaoh.

Once Fox, who also was not Moses, guided the children of light out of Pharaoh’s grasp on our souls. Now, thee and a handful of others lead the children of light out of the desert, the road to attention to the voice within, and back to the halls of Mammon.

In order to work Pharaoh’s will over our children, lies must be the unquestionable truth. For lies to be taken as true, Pharaoh must place the priest’s hand over the mouths of all who ask why, all who point to the wrongs, from the products of slavery in our shelters - prison labor used by Friends, to the grasp for power to lead by Trustees, to the misappropriation of our name by those who raise money for their own ego at the cost of our reputation.

No, Richard, thee is not Pharaoh, and I am not Moses or Fox. But, I do hark to the voice of God, who for all the ages has said to each of us to tell Pharaoh to let His people go, that we might serve him. Speak truth to all power, even our dear friends. Let His people go.

The last gasps of our former faith

2010-03-22T07:48:00.000-07:00

I would post these words to the 15th Street Meeting’s Google group, however, they now employ Richard A. Evans, as a censor and as a child of the McCarthite America, and proud son of a father who resisted the banal evils of that day, I refuse to write in censored forums.

Leadership always seeks the last word, if not a monologue when power is threatened. Quakerism rose out of a need to break the patterned thinking of power’s culture through the empowerment of the individual voice in a disciplined community, disciplined by eldership, not leadership seeking power over the souls of the membership.

This is no longer true of Quakerism in the New York Quarterly Meeting. Today, leadership seeks to entrench its power by the same old banal evil which a small band of courageous souls risked death to oppose in our early days. Today, these leaders do not have the tools of the pillory, the scourge or the hangman’s noose, but they have the law and they have the closed committee doors.

We are plagued today by closed committee meetings which spread untruths about members, and destroy the comfort and involvement of the best of us. Why is this happening? Because great amounts of money are at stake as the emergent leadership in our Meetings squander the accomplishments of generations of Friends by giving over more and more of what Friends built in the past to non-Quaker businesses. Our schools are now bastions of elitism and classism, and the few voices in our Meetings which cry out for transparency in the dealings in these matters are branded as trouble makers and opposed by a controlling few in all nominations to positions of eldership in the Meetings.

We once sought to empower diverse voices, in a sort of spontaneous act of genius, early Friends realized that God’s plan centered around diversity, and in order to be truly a diverse community of freed minds, we must empower each voice to bring light to the whole. We also realized that the law of states must not constrain that diversity of conscience. As a result we placed our faith over laws which bound others to slavery, which sent us to war… However, today, there is a committee in the Quarter which seeks to overturn the expressed unity of the Quarter on the role of Trustees. Two years ago, during the Seventh Month business meeting, we were in unity on following the British Yearly Meeting lead, that Trustees had no power, other than to rubberstamp for the State the decisions of the gathered meeting in unity.
Now, however, Trustees claim power given them by the State is in conflict with that minute and have put together a committee of Friends and Lawyers to define their powers. This is one more nail in the coffin of Quakerism in this quarter.

A very Otway THanksgiving

2009-11-26T06:41:00.000-08:00

Ever since the first Otway fell off the boat into the new world, we celebrate Thanksgiving by remembering the story of the first thanksgiving.

The youngest child, generally the only one sober enough to speak, tells this story, before joining the adults in a gin and tonic.... Story of the First Thanksgiving.

It was the night before Christmas, and the Pilgrims where feeling a bit peckish, after the long swim from England, the Mayflower having hit an iceberg and sank. Captain Smith ordered the woman and children into the life boats first, as he knew that there were not enough boats for all, an old tradition in the British maritime, only to find they had forgotten the life boats all together. Although they were still in the Themes Estuary and a scant 10 minute swim to Wapping, they decided that as long as they were already wet, they'd go for it and struck out for New York.

On the way they talked it over and decided that as long as they were going through all the trouble they might as well swim to Massachusetts so that their grand kids would all be rich New Englanders in stead of poor New Yorkers, and who wanted to live in a city where the Mayor was a bad tempered Dutch guy with a wooden leg who called the place New Amsterdam anyway, so I am getting off the point, it was time for dinner.

So there were Indians there also, John Smith and his wife Pocahontas, because she was tired of her dad chasing her husband John around with an axe every time he made the same old joke "Hey, did the White guys pay the rent yet?". Christopher Columbus got the place of honor at the head of the table. He was very old at this point, and probably dead, but was such a figure of respect that no one told him, but rather made sure the head of the table was down wind from everyone and they didn't ask Chris to carve the turkey or they'd all starve.

The Turkeys were much larger then, as it was a long time ago and they were still evolving from their Dinosaur ancestors, so one or two fed all of New England, and there was still some left to make clothes out of. So, now you know why we pardon a Turkey at the white house every year, then chop its head off and eat it.

Happy Thanks Giving to all and to all a good night, after a little Alka-Seltzer

Cheers

Lorcan

Slavery and dissident Quaker voices today

2009-11-10T07:49:00.001-08:00

Elizabeth Buffum Chace

Well over one hundred years ago, Elizabeth Buffum Chace wrote some words which I hope give comfort to the persistent voices out of step with the Meeting, and I hope give pause to those who feel they know what is best for Quaker institutions and are well ensconced in the Friendly mainstream. She writes:

Several persons, in various parts of the country, were forcibly carried out of the Friend's meeting for attempting, therein to urge upon Friends the duty "to maintain, faithfully their testimony against slavery," as their Discipline required. A few meeting houses in country places, had been opened for the Anti-Slavery meetings, whereupon our New England Yearly Meeting adopted a rule that no meeting house under its jurisdiction, should be opened except for meetings of our religious Society.

During those years, I could not help feeling a sense of gave responsibility for these unrighteous proceedings, so long as I remained a member of the Society, and my mind was deeply exercised concerning my duty in the matter. Other Anti-Slavery Friends thought it was best to remain in the Society, and strive to reform these abuses. But we were few in number; and the great body of Quakerism in the country was against us. Our lips were sealed in the meetings, and out of our meetings we were in disgrace. -" despised and rejected. " One young Friend in Massachusetts had written a very earnest, open letter to Friends, in remonstrance for their pro-slavery position. He was universally condemned by all the powerful influences of the Society.Talking with one of the most influential members at our Yearly Meeting, who expressed strong condemnation of this young man's presumption, I said, "But is not what he says true?" And the man replied, "Well, thee may be sure, it will certainly kill him as a Friend."

No belief in Papal infallibly was ever stronger in the Catholic mind, than was the assumption, not expressed in words, that the Society could do no wrong, and that on this question of slavery, silence should be maintained and no reproof, exhortation, or entreaty against the pro-slavery attitude of the Society, should be tolerated. The claim of Friends, that the transaction of their Society affairs, should be under the immediate inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit, so beautifully set forth in so many of their writings and sermons, as well are required in their Discipline, was sometimes perverted to authorize proceedings and actions which were far from being holy...

Reading this today, some argue that there are no issues as pressing as was slavery ... the wrong of slavery was as profound a stain on the soul of our nation as ever existed, and as such, such observations as that of Friend Chace cannot be applied to the petty questions of freedom and fairness of the world today. And yet, perhaps this should cut in the opposite direction. If we Friends turned the other way in the face of our sisters and brothers chained to plow and property, perhaps because it was the way of the world of that day, we should be careful to weigh our processes against our being inured to the way of the world today.

Today, some friends notice that there is a profound wrong in the use of prison goods in our Meeting houses, there is a profound wrong in sacrificing even one Quaker child to the ideal that certain children are not clever enough or wealthy enough to be deserving of a Quaker education, that our Meetings would turn their schools founded by our spiritual ancestors over to non-Quaker business interests, or that there should be an end to secret back room dealing on nominations, that there should be transparency in our business dealings, that trustees should never act on the power given by the state but should only following the dictates of God speaking through a Meeting in unity and that unity should include dissident voices with the same weight and equality of the institutional status quo, the "great body of Quakerism"... I can only urge faith and gentleness of people who profess the same.

Thine walking cheerfully across the world - out of step with all but the still, small voice of God within all,
Lorcan

Faith or Fashion among Friends

2009-10-30T06:51:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends:

I find a lot of wisdom in the plain faiths which have not given into the fashions of the day. A plain Mennonite was quoted in a recent book, "We aren't told by our church what jobs to take, but, if you can't dress plain in your job, it is likely the wrong job to be doing." That statement is a deep river.

It gets back to me, from many Friends, that many feel those few of us who still dress plain are eccentric. A few, very few Friends actually say this to our faces. On the other hand, in the world at large, we find our plain witness is understood and we can dress plain in our work lives, as we travel, as we visit other churches, other communities, other nations. "If you can't dress plain in... it is likely the wrong..." What has become of our faith, when people wear bits of army uniforms to Meeting without thought, and it is not eccentric in a community that witnesses to peace... where Friends can wear business suits which cost far more than their cloth is worth - valued as a statement of class and fashion, but to dress to one's faith as a Quaker is considered anything from quaint to eccentric.

There is a lot about being a Friend in the Society of Friends today that seems to have gone out of style with plain dress. The depth of thought which rose out of our birth in a faith called the "Seekers" seems to be becoming out of fashion. Our faith, more than our clothing should be free of the slavery of fashion.

But, in my life time I watched as the deep discourse of my childhood was dumbed down in response to the fashionable discourse of the day. Eldership was rejected with the coming of the generation which worshiped youth and rejected the old traditions which they saw as autocratic. Some traditions were, but the baby was tossed with the bath water.

I remember more wisdom from my First Day teachers of the early sixties than from any other point in my experiences with Friends. Take for example, the view on sin expressed by one of my early First Day teachers, I think it might have been Herb White.

Sin, he said, is not about right or wrong, it is about separation. Sin is when even good things I do, set me against others and God.

Such wisdom would serve us well today, as we alienate each other over the business of the Meeting.

The next epoch I have seen is the effect of "Identity Politics" on seeking within the Society of Friends... it seems the youth culture gave way to the "shut up" culture. Who was talking became much more important than what was being said. It was true, there was a White male Establishment, but once again, the baby was thrown out with the bath water and more and more the conversation was focused on "listen to me" rather than the quality of what was being said.

I hope we go back to the simplicity of our faith - seeking God in our daily work, not just a hour a week in worship. All the good, hard work of innovators who wanted more voices heard, from the young to alternatives to the White middle aged male, seems to have turned this process of waiting for God's will expressed in our Meetings, over to a cynical few who would lead... maybe even a cynical majority... it is hard to know the state of the Society with so much happening in back rooms and cliques.

In the dumbing down of our culture, there are many who say I write too much. I think of the letter from the Birmingham Jail... the correspondence over the Hicksite\Orthodox split, the old age of writing... and I hear what Friends are saying, and wonder why they have little response other than you write too much. Well, there we are, living in the "shut up" generation, and seeking light in a sound bite.

For me, I think we should be cautious with every fashion, from fashion of thought, to the statement of our clothes... I think that testimony of our past has wisdom and depth today.

All I know is that I miss the faith of my youth.

Thine in the light
Lorcan

Youngering or Eldering - a Core Problem

2009-10-29T06:38:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends:

For years now I have seen the New York Quaker Quarter deal with conflict badly. We are pulled along by people with obvious issues and little personal discipline. I believe, this is in part, an outcome of an age (the Sixties and Seventies) where discipline became stigmatized.

So, to begin, let's look at the concept of discipline - from the root disciple. In our Meetings, we are not disciples of Gurus or Religious leadership, but of God as expressed in the gathered Meeting coming to unity.

If discipline breaks down, our discipleship is without meaning.

In the past, in a Hicksite Meeting, discipline was maintained by reading out of Meeting those who consistently broke discipline by not allowing a Meeting to elder them, by ignoring the process of unity. Again, it was about process, not about behavior, not about opinion. I make the distinction between Hicksite practice and the Orthodox sects, as the Orthodox sects read out of Meeting on the basis of theology, and reading out in a Hicksite Meeting was rare.

Today, a small number of people hold sway in the Meeting by employing public anger, by obstructionism, and by backroom politicking - keeping secrets from the Meeting as a body.

When challenged in the manner employed by friends from the start of our faith, the writing of Friends to each other, the reaction is predictably negative. In the past, even at time of great stress in the Society, Friends have answered writing with a response in writing, or a request for clearness, or a request for threshing.

Today, we are adrift, seeking ways to go forward, without any examination of the past. I heard a Friend respond to a call for our Quarter to look to elders by saying, "We need youngering, not eldering." Frankly, we have been "youngered" to the point that we have lost our way. If we do not look to the past strengths of our faith, we might as well call it a day for the Society of Friends.

Thine in the light

Lorcan

Joe McCann and the war in Ireland - a letter to Nuala

2009-10-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

Belfast 1977

Nuala, a chara:

Your father was killed when I was a teenager, trying to make up my mind about how, as a Quaker in the US, to handle the Vietnam war draft.

We are an Anglo Irish family in the States, and there have been family members on both sides of the issues in Ireland, as far back as Roger Casement, who is an Otway on his mother's side.

I joined the official Republican clubs, and was involved with them until the killing of Seamus Costello, at which point I remained a non-aligned Republican - in support of civil rights, but unlike some, not judgemental of the armed struggle.

My concern, as a Quaker, was twofold, one of truth and the other of the inescapable chain of responses to violence. I will return to this, as it is a complex issue, taking a little personal history to link it to the statement about judgemenalism...

Even growing up in a pacifist community of faith, many of us had to face the often expressed opinion that we were objectors to war out of cowardice. So, at some point, I decided to go to war with a camera, to witness what war was, and help create an understanding among those who support war without knowing it closely and personally. Your father was one of a few figures which made the struggle in Ireland, for me, the war I would observe.

There were other figures as well, Bernadette McAlisky, Eamonn McCann, Seamus Costello, who inspired me to believe that even in the armed struggle of war, there were some seeking truths. I came to see, however, that even deep thinkers, like your father, might be being used cynically by governments which so obscured the truth of the conflict, what good and moral people were simple pawns, symbols, and sacrifices to events beyond understanding at the time.

I've come to believe, that there was a complex of struggles on going in occupied Ireland at the time. To those on the front lines, struggling against often unchecked or government sponsored violence, the struggle seemed to be the simple economic struggle of colonialism. But for the British government, it was a matter of keeping a community divided by violence through British Millitary sponsored sectarian killings, and the shoot to kill policy.

Over the years, I began to believe that Britain and the US created the war in Ireland as a tool in the control of Ireland as a buffer in NATO's plans to contain the Warsaw Pact. Seeing Ireland as a case of Low Iintensity Conflict, explains the decades of infiltration of the armed politic on both sides of the struggle. As Spain, and France pulled out of NATO, NATO sought a staging platform for a war in Europe, as Ireland became during the Gulf Wars.

I am the first to say, even in hindsight, that it is impossible to say the continuation of a non-violent, resistance struggle would have been successful or even possible. I believe that Britain as the agent of NATO, would have murdered people like your father to insure that Low Intensity Conflict kept Ireland divided and occupied. The complex of issues spinning off of this, from Jack Lynch and Charlie Haughie re-arming Republicans... point to the war as being manipulated, and impossible to have understood for its real politic on the streets where people fought for survival.

But, true internationalist thinkers, like your father, kept a small number of us seeking, hopefully learning... There is much more I could write... but, here in New York, I will leave it to those who risked much more to take stock of what happened in Ireland during your father's life. It seems the years pass by with such speed... a life time since your father was killed. Unfortunately it is no longer seen as shocking to murder a wounded combatant, as was done to your father.

We live in times, today, where wars are used to obscure truths, to control masses of people and where many good people on all sides are sacrificed to plans which are never disclosed to those behind the guns. Understanding the life and times of your father is vital at this point. He was a brave, and a good man, who gave his life for justice, and was likely a tool used by cynical and evil governments. His loss cost Ireland and the world a voice which should have grown with age like so many in the armed Republican movement.
All the very best
Is mise, le meas
Lorcan

Eldership rather than Leadership

2009-10-27T15:48:00.001-07:00

In a Quaker Meeting there is no place for leadership. Leadership owns the outcome. Eldership is not self interested, is not motivated by ego, is not concerned with the outcome, the outcome is in God's hands. An elder is only interested in the process, which is meant to insure God's hand in the outcome. Leadership seeks to limit the conversation, seeks to insure the "right" outcome. Leadership is the church Fox and the seekers left.
Leadership is always nervous about new and uncontrolled media. The ministers and priests did not want the people to read in Fox's day, as it gave them the ability to interpret the Bible for themselves. In the same way, there is a great fear of Quaker discussion on the Internet today. Those who seek to lead are afraid that uncontrolled speech erodes the power which should not exist in a Quaker Meeting in the first place. The Internet is no more dangerous than the old pamphlets like "View from the Back Benches..." The only ones afraid of that pamphlet were those who did not want Quakers to examine their community too deeply.

Which side are we on?

2009-10-25T17:11:00.001-07:00

And here am I, a Quaker, for all my grown life, and most of my childhood… musing on Sacco and Vanzetti.And, thinking of so many, Lynne Stewart, Gandhi, King, Jesus, of Joe McCann, of Steven Biko, of Fox, of Hannah Bernard, of my dear friend Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, of oh so many it is beyond listing, for most of you would simply see names. I am thinking of my own road, of Indian nations, of a war in Ireland, of so many who can be best be described, as self described - those with no property… I know in my own life with whom I would stand, where I have stood. I have not stood with the descendants of Jackson and Custer, but have stood with the children of Sitting Bull, I have not stood with the descendants of Fuller, but with those wrongly accused and convicted, the prison mates of Sacco and Vanzetti - who are, in fact, the cell mates of Mary Dyer. I have walked with King and McAliskey, I have faced the guns with Joe McCann, not only in the streets of Belfast, where I literally felt my knees shake with fear, but in American court rooms where I felt my heart seize up and the room spin, as judges in courts of law not courts of justice stifled the voices of justice, those who simply hoped for … a chance to speak.I have know, and been a friend to, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, shot dead, murdered by the FBI… others, driven underground, jailed or killed because they wanted only one thing, a little light on the darker corners of the American dream, which are now becoming the American main stream, a place of much more dark than light. And I look at what is happening here. Are we seeking to silence voices of power, of privilege? No. I think of all who I have walked with as a Quaker, from Fox to Barrington Dunbar, to Stewart and McAliskey, and I am sure in my conviction that they would see that were this Quarter is turning, in its choice of who to silence and who to empower, that the New York Quaker Quarter has chosen to turn away from Fox, and Dyer, from Dunbar and all those who proudly said, we are those without power and property… but are those with hope and vision. The New York Quaker Quarter now has chosen to stand with Pilot and privilege and call this process.I don’t even know why I am bothering to write this. Those who aspire to power, those who are born to privilege, those who unconsciously are drawn to stand with the status quo, see those who are born to the coal fields, the ship yards, the long picket lines, the street battles for fairness, the homeless, the forgotten, the meek who will never inherit, as a nit to be picked on the road to success. But, we who sing the songs of freedom do so because there is simply nothing else to do. As Phil Ochs said, shortly before his suicide at the news of the death of Victor Hara… “what else can we do in the face of cold cruel men and their cold cruel machines…” So simply consider this one more song of freedom in the face of tyranny, as I ask, which side are you on?

Historically, the Voice of God is More Often Heard in the Voice of the Dissident

2009-10-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

Jesus, Gandhi, King, Bonheoffer, Dekanawida, Fox… I have a hard time thinking of a time when God’s voice was heard in the words of the brokers of power and privilege. And yet, for any institution, even our own Meetings, it is the voice of the dissident which is the most feared and suppressed. And yet, again and again, history finds the voice of the dissident was that signpost on the arch of justice, proved right by the passage of time. So, a foundation of Quakerism is to joyfully include a diversity of opinion on committees - knowing that though it makes for more difficult roads to discernment, the outcome is God’s voice expressed in our unity. To exclude dissident voices, because of the paths picked by those few who would be leadership in a Quaker community, is to exclude the voice of God from our processes. I realize that today it is quaint, in the face of corporate interests, to believe God speaks to us, but there is much about me which some find quaint, and I am unapologetic about the quaintness of my faith.

Many know that taking care of a sick parent, a seriously struggling business, makes it impossible for me to be at the next Quarterly Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business. I know, deeply in my heart, that those who support the "truth" as defined by power and wealth, by "the way of the world" by "corporate realities in the modern world" will be very happy that I am called elsewhere. My greatest hope is that one Friend may, in the light of courage, in faith, read the letter from the Birmingham Jail, read of Fox standing in church and stopping business as usual, let God lead you to say the time to live our faith is now, and in the spirit of King, Gandhi and Fox, stop business as usual until such time as we stop the politicking and allow God into our Meetings. http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

For those who ask how can is it possible to stand up to the powers that be in this quarter and demand a place for dissident voices, let me remind Friends that when two Friends were both marginalized by their past disagreements - on opposite sides of the factions which unfortunatly exist in our Meeting, one was outright blacklisted from service in our Meetings, and the other refused to serve, I labored to get one voice onto nominating, then immediately labored to get the other onto Pastoral Care… it is not about the outcome, not about representing one point of view or another, it is about voices in process.

It takes one courageous voice to stand up in Meetings, with King, Gandhi, Bonheoffer, Dekanawida, Fox, Jesus, and God. Business as usual is worship, it is simply business. You can be one of the crowd who stood by as Citizen’s Committee’s did their terrible work, or worse yet, as the NRA co-opted King’s memory for the Gulf war, you could stand with the crowd who watched Rome do its terrible work in Judea, you can stand with those who watched as Fox was dragged from churches and beaten, or you could be moved to hear the voice of the dissident, sit at the lunch counter, as hard as that was and is… stop business as usual.

"Quaker Schools" Trustees and Mary Dyer...

2009-10-23T06:13:00.000-07:00

A fragment of Mary Dyer's Wedding Dress

One day, I held a small piece of Mary Dyer’s wedding dress, the dress in which she was hanged for our faith. I was moved to tears. Today, I look at the state, the craven, political, conniving state of our Meetings, and again I am moved to tears.
Once again, a capable member of a Meeting in the New York Quarter was nominated to be a trustee. And, as has happened again and again in the past, the nomination did not even come to the floor of the Meeting. Why?
Members of Trustees campaigned in the back rooms, without a process of clearness with the nominee, in order to stack the deck against a diversity of thought on Trustees.
I had a conversation with a member of Trustees who told me that he was shocked as I was and was trying to make things better… this is the email I sent this Friend:
Dear Friend:
I appreciate your intentions to help the Meeting become more Quakerly... but, the lessons of our history, not only as Quakers, but as Americans, is the time to do it, is not "with all deliberate speed"... but now.
In the time it took to make things right on Indian reservations, not only did the majority of the land and rights be taken away, funny enough, things were never made right.
In the time it took to create racial equality after Brown v. Board, not only was there white flight from the schools, but funny enough, things were never made equal...
In the time it will take to create balance and end politicking in this Meeting, we will lose property, credibility and members of faith, and my prediction is that things will never be balanced and politics will not end, and we will not come to listen to the will of God as expressed in true unity.
We are not a people of compromise. It is specifically stated in Quaker writing for over three hundred years, unity is not compromise. If we compromise on balance and fairness in this meeting, we take the gift of our faith and throw it back in God's face, and God forgive us for the weakness.
Thine in the light
Lorcan

I find myself convinced that our Meetings are no longer Quaker, but are rather business minded at the expense of the faith handed down to us by generations who stood on the frontiers of faith, often at the cost of their fortunes, their freedom and their lives, and once again, I find myself weeping.
Thy Friend
Lorcan

New Blog... Big Change in my life....

2009-08-11T17:58:00.000-07:00

The on going story of an historical harp, made by John Egan, almost 200 years ago, found in a dumpster in New York City. Egan invented the modern Irish folk harp and saved Irish harping. The blog is about this harp, its life and times, its being found, and going to England for conservation and restoration, about my going from being a piper to a harper... a ripping yarn.

http://johneganharp.blogspot.com/

I also hope I can neglect this, my first blog a little less...

Anti-amish hatered on Facebook

2009-02-08T05:10:00.001-08:00

Photo Lorcan Otway all rights reserved

There are several anti-Amish groups on Facebook. I've drafted this response to post when I get to a faster computer, hopefully this morning before Meeting.

Dear Friends:

I have been reading the postings of this group, and feel called on to offer a response. Prejudice is often a result of a lack of self reflection and has little place in the United States, in light of the goals upon which this nation was founded. Part of those goals grew from the events leading to my Amish friends coming to this continent. We Quakers, like the Amish, were a people who were killed in large numbers in our European home nations because of our faith. We were killed because we would not conform to the idea that part of citizenship was to break the commandment against killing and to conform to the slavery of class.
By luck, we Quakers were given the charter for a colony, Pennsylvania, wherein we promised the religious freedom we did not know in England and Ireland. Anna-Baptists from Germany and Holland and Switzerland came, as did French Huguenots, European Jews, and other nonconformists. In this colony we set a standard for fair treatment which is remembered in the American Indian community of nations today, as we did not break a single treaty with Indian nations in Pennsylvania. We also became a destination for Africans, brought to this continent to be slaves, in their escape north, away from that stain on this nations soul.
Some of the objections to the Amish, voiced here have been that their children sometimes die in farming accidents. This is true. In the world outside the Amish community, some children also die. They die, in this land of wealth, from the effects of poverty, neglect, and prejudice as well as the happenstance of living in a world where accidental death is always a possibility. Worse, they die in wars, seldom fought for the reasons given by political leaders. Some Mennonites (the root community of the Amish) as well as Quakers die in these wars, but they die as we do, trying to mitigate the horror of war by being medics or other workers for peace. In this world of uncertainty, it is not so much a matter of avoiding death, but how we face unreasonable, unexpected death, and the response to the deaths of the children at Nickel Mines, in Lancaster spoke volumes about how Amish people face such death.
It has been said that Amish people do not smell good. I have not found this to be the case. I dress plain, as do my Amish friends. I live in a city, so I do not do farm labor. As such, I suppose I smell the way most urban working people smell - of soap. I have found that Amish who labor in the fields smell as do farmers I have known in rural Ireland, England and France, Upstate New York, and other places where the food you eat is grown. I suggest if the smell of a farmer offends you, you might try working a farm someday. After all, I expect you live off that labor. If you find it objectionable to be around farmers, stop buying up farmland and turning it into suburban sprawl. There is plenty of room in the city, where folks do "clean" work.
There are statements here about the Amish being backward, or not intelligent in the choice of how they live. Well, as I write this, we are in the middle of a world wide recession which resulted from the simple basic greed of the other world, Amish have chosen not to live within.
The idea that making fun of people is harmless because they cannot hear you is simply wrong. Each of you that harbors prejudice hurts yourself deeply. You are hurt by a lack of self reflection. Self awareness comes from reaching out to those things you hate or fear. Germany was not made stronger by nazism, or the United States made stronger by the klan. England was not made stronger by the national front, nor was France made stronger by collaborating with the nazis. Nations become stronger, when as Daniel Webster reminded us, we pull together. No community can afford the luxury of ignorant prejudice, and no individual is fully complete without the love of neighbor.
Today this world is being ripped apart by wars rooted in ignorant prejudice - it continues or ends with each of you.

With love, respect and trust in your soul's ability to heal
Lorcan Otway

"God says I'm right, you're wrong..."

2009-01-24T03:40:00.000-08:00

A man screams at imagration rights marchers - photo Lorcan Otway

Last week, I sat in a cab and wondered, however did we Christians get into this mess? The driver had the radio playing, loudly, a "Christian" radio broadcast - the point of which, was the Jews did not understand their own scripture, but rather, where tricked by God into proclaiming the good news of the Christian faith, which they were not enlightened enough to understand.

Give me a break.

Now, some ten to twenty percent of Americans are upset that President Obama recognized nonbelievers as part of the American fabric as well...

Give me another break.

Let's get real here. One of the greatest strengths of Judaism, theologically, is the acceptance that God chose Jews - not as the only people who would go to heaven, but as people who should live God's law. Judaism, early on, realized that God's plan was diverse and forgiving.

Then, Judea was conquered by fascists. Let's face it full on. Rome was not a live and let live kind of culture. The pontifex maximus, "supreme pontiff," of the Romans who invaded Judea, held a religious title which was once the literal chief bridge builder of Rome. He built bridges between people, not by accepting their differences, but by enforcing orthodoxy.

There could not be a more distant statement of theological approach between the Roman ideal of peace through conformity to Roman ideals and that light which led Mary Dyer to speak the words, "Truth is my authority, not authority my truth."

It is apparent to me, simply in the way the natural world is formed, that truth is self confident enough to accept diversity. The weak and fearful need everyone to get in line -- behind every empire is a bully, and inside every bully is a person to afraid of others to be accepting.

Yeshua was no bully. He did not convince by denying the light of others. He fed others, asked to drink from those who were not his tribe. It is only when those who invaded his land wrested his faith from his kinsman, that his water of life was denied to those who wore a different cloth.

I am tired of the pride and arrogance of "Christianity", in the same way I would have been tired of the Roman Eagle, brought into the temple, the swastika emblazoned on every wall, the boorish cants of USA as rockets fall. I am tired of seeing writers jailed for insulting "royalty." I am tired of denouncement, riot, pride and war.

It has long been the same. This nation in which a President once responded to attacks from clergy by writing, "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," still holds a powerful petty few, too fearful of their own infallibility, that they must attempt tyranny over the minds of others.

I am rather certain, that this presidency will be a true bridge builder, not a tyranny over the minds of others. Let those who seek a pagan pontiff clamor and wail, but I pray that God grants this nation the strength courage to rise above ignorance and fear to bend towards that real confidence of acceptance of that of God, fully in others.

Torture IS a moral issue, but so is homelessness

2008-12-10T02:34:00.000-08:00

15th Street Meetinghouse Photo Lorcan Otway

As I contemplate the banner in front of our Meetinghouse which reads, "Torture is a Moral Issue" I worry that we might find it easier to deal with the wrongs of others, distant wrongs, then to deal with the wrongs we do, the wrongs done directly in our name.

The post before this one, I wrote about an incident which happened last First Day, concerning a man without a home, who was crying in fear because our Meeting's employee had thrown away all his possessions. I also posted the writing to our Meetings google group. Interestingly enough, there was no discussion about it on the google group. Two Friends did write to me, their comments were both thankful for the piece, and commented on a glaring misspelling (now corrected).

However, as a Meeting, when George W Bush commits an outrage, we can assume there will be a minute at business meeting, a banner proclaiming our sentiments in front of the Meetinghouse... finger pointing.

There have been times I have travelled rough - always knowing that months away was a warm bed and a home. I cannot say I know fully the experience of hopelessness that must accompany the knowledge that the cold, the wet clothes, the distrust of settled people will be my whole life, but, I can say that my own indelible fear of being homeless comes from the physical memory of holes in my shoes on rain pouring on my head and many miles stretching out before me.

It might be just that, a physical memory of hardship, or perhaps Friend John Maynard's influence when I was young, his witness which led me to get to know my neighbors who do not have a place to sleep, which leads me to get to know these folks by name - their real names, as well as their nick names, all their names other than "bum."

I am ashamed to say, I feel a bit selfish to say that these friendships have often proved valuable to me. I have learned so much, American Indian treaty law from Dan Charging Hawk, a Lakota brother of mine who died on the street several years ago. I learned recipes from Patrick, an Indonesian sailor and cook, who was set on fire and killed as he slept ten feet from my doorway. I learned some part of the Dene, or Navajo language from Mat Benally, who died on the street where he lived, a wall next to my home. I still tell the stories and jokes I heard from former child actor, Broadway Bob, who I watched live out his old age, and die, without a home in my neighborhood. I learned a lot from Vinnie Harquail. He was a Micmac native from Brunswick. He played a great Scottish folk harmonica. He had a style I never heard before or since, playing counterpoint rhythms out of the other side of his mouth. I learned a lot about forgiveness from him. One day, from my window, I saw a policeman fling him off the doorstep across the street, and hit him on his arm with his nightstick so hard, I heard the crack four flights up. Vinnie got to his feat, and looked at the fellow, shock his head sadly and walked away. From Vinnie I learned first hand about Anna Mae Aquash, the Micmac woman who founded the survival schools and led Vinnie and twenty some Micmacs to Wounded Knee in 1973. And, I watched Vinnie slowly eaten away by cancer on the street next to my home. I learned of the Yippee supporters of the Black Panthers from Russell, who died an agonizing death from gangrene there, next to my home. I received applause at concerts for a song I wrote, from the story of Bobby, a gunnery sergeant who was awarded the Silver Star, and who died alone on the street outside my door. I could go on for chapters... Nancy who kept me laughing through the night in a hospital waiting room, perhaps the same one she died alone within, Maggie, Billy, Merrith Stops-at-pretty-places ... each one of these friends now only a treasured memory.

For some people, their fear, their disgust, their heartless pity for these people is answerable only by pushing them away. The same people who would grant sanctuary to the victim of the wrongs of governments fear granting sanctuary to the victims of our own success and comfort. For me, it is a moral issue, as much as torture is a moral issue, as it is the torture not caused in our name, but the torture to which we contribute in our fears and failings.

I find the response that some choose to be homeless, as hollow as the response to our objection to torture, that in a dangerous world where people seek to hurt us, we must hurt others to gain information to keep us safe. The lesson of the Hebraic roots of our faith is that we do not do wrong because another has done wrong, nor do we do right only to those who do right, if we are to walk with righteousness before our God. We do right for the sake of right.

Certainly the answer to homelessness is not to have our gates open to those sleeping rough. But, perhaps what we learn from not closing that gate, might teach us a way to end the moral failing of a nation with so many with no roof over their heads.

Bobby - Photo Lorcan Otway

Matt Benali - Vinny Harquail - Bobby Hill - photo Lorcan Otway

A pal and Vinnie - Photo Lorcan Otway

Dan Charginghawk when he had a home with his wife Tina and son Fourwinds - Genie and Lorcan Otway - Photo Jon Hutson

Unwelcome Angels at Meeting

2008-12-08T03:44:00.000-08:00

When God sends angels to us, it is not always for our comfort. This message came to me, after an incident as we settled down for Meeting this last First Day. I heard screaming in front of the Meeting house, and went out to find a neighbor who had no place to live in a state of fear and crying. There was another Friend there, a member of Ministry and Worship. The homeless neighbor was screaming that his bag was missing, with everything he owns, and that without it, in this cold weather, he could die. He had left it in the corner of our Meeting house's front courtyard.

I supposed our caretaker would know about it, so I brought him inside, trough a side entrance as not to further disturb worshipers. In the common room there were still some Friends from the earlier Meeting having tea and snacks. The fellow was still crying and begging Friends to give him back his bag, promising to be good and never leave it with us again. I found our caretaker, who began to tell me that he had thrown it away in the garbage and he had done so because the fellow was a problem. I told him to give the fellow back his things, and it was done, with a great deal of crying and begging from the owner, and angry justifications and banging of dumpster lids by our caretaker. He told me that (as best as I could follow, our friend's English is not great when he is angry) the fellow had sued to be allowed to live on the street, and that we were aiding a criminal act.

I started back to the Meeting house, but could not go in. I felt deeply ashamed that we had driven one of God's angels from our doorstep. I went out again, to give the fellow my phone number, so that I might address this to the Meeting, and let him know the outcome in light of this breech of hospitality. The Friend from Ministry and Worship asked that we speak first and told me that if we extended a blanket invitation to homeless people to sleep in our front courtyard we would loose members, and people would not enroll in Friend's Seminary - our Meeting's school.

I offered that we need to quickly address this issue in, at least a joint meeting of Pastoral Care and Ministry and Worship. During Meeting the message about angles came to me. I thought of how unlike our testimonies it was to turn away someone in need, when we had an abundance of resources. We had just spent a huge sum on placing blue stone over the entire courtyard at the behest of the school. In the message I related that several other churches in midtown, whose worshipers were the most wealthy and powerful New Yorkers, had gone to court to stop the police from driving away homeless people who would sleep on the steps of the church, seeking some small sanctuary. I related how, a Jewish friend who worships with us, describes a town in Israel where they seek to live the Torah in full. There, people will cross the street to not disturb a cat eating from the garbage, in recognition of all living things basic right to comfort.

I was reminded and spoke of a time, some forty years ago, when, to remind us of our neglect of homeless neighbors, a Friend lay across the sidewalk, and Friends stepped over him to enter Meeting. All did, except Friend Marjory Cornwall, who stopped, bent down, so she might see his face and said, "Oh, John!" I spoke of our Meeting as a place set aside for God and asked if we are not still stepping over John

Another message followed, from a visiting Friend, from another meeting. She was a young adult who had never given a message before, but felt forced to her feet the moment I sat down, to say she had just returned from the devastated parts of New Orleans, and that having a place that is a home is everything.

Two more messages followed hers. One Friend said that the examples of others should not be our motivation, but we should look to God's intention for us, and another said that our Meeting houses were not more sacred than a bathroom.

I agree with both observations. I do feel, however, that the examples of others help us, as witness to remember to seek God's guidance, not the guidance of expediency. If we followed the interest of worry over loss of membership or property there would never have been an Underground Railroad. And set aside for God, is quite different from sacred. Most places held sacred by people -- worshiped as idolic representations of God, are jealously protected. Our place, we nurture for God's use, should be a place open to God's intentions for us, not our worries over our many temptations to exclusivity.

Photos - Carl being awakened in the Park, - Lorcan Otway

In New York, the city has been removing benches for decades now, to keep homeless people from sleeping in sight of those of us with roofs over our heads. Our Jewish friend, told me after Meeting that in the most religiously observant places in Israel, when homeless people stretch out on public benches -- neighbors go out and cover them with blankets. This simple act, seems to be, so much more God's intention. I am mindful of the Christian belief that Christ comes to us in the least of our neighbors, in the most unexpected among us, and I hope that we find a way forward other than driving Christ from our doorstep.

Eva Mitten Otway and Henry Thomas Otway
My own family, in the past, was divided on driving God's angles from the door. My Grandfather, Salvation Army Divisional Commander Henry Otway loved the poor and the homeless ... just not on his doorstep. So, he placed a series of small openings in the stairs attached to a water line, to send a cascade of water down the front steps. My grandmother, Eva Mitten Otway, would never let him turn it on. My father was drawn to his father's side of the equation, I am drawn to Grandmother's.

The Hawks of New York are dying...

2008-11-28T17:12:00.001-08:00

I wrote this story last year. In the interim time, all the hawks I photographed in the East Village have died. Saturating our neighborhoods with poison does not seem to control rats, but does have a profound effect on Urban Raptors. I can't put the blame on the shoulders of city officials alone. We have to change the culture of litter in New York. Setting out on another ecological disaster, such as we saw with the use of DDT, decades ago, seems just not wise in these days where the planet is showing such hard use and wear.

For those who read the quotes attributed to me in the Villager this week, they were not accurate. I did not say hawks were eating the poisons, nor did I repeat the quote from the following article as my own, it was a quote from Francois Portman, and was taken out of context.

Red Tailed Hawk Tomkings Square Park - Photo Lorcan Otway

In the parks of the Lower East Side, packets of Contrac are popping up in flower beds like crocuses. Francois Portmann, a Swiss photographer, told me where to find packets of Contrac, a second generation anticoagulant rodenticide, lying on the ground in parks throughout the Lower East Side. Each packet is found in a place often frequented by the pair of red tail hawks which have so delighted the people of the Village, and increased the number of "birders" coming to our neighborhood. Bird watching has become a local passion for many in the neighborhood. "I will be over at Union Square park," says Francois. "There is a Scott's Oriole there, a bird from Arizona/Mexico that has nothing to do with here, hordes of birders from the tri-state area came by through the weekend to see it." In Union Square. I find Dennis Edge, a local bird photographer, explaining the habits of local birds to knots of people. This morning, Dennis is surrounded by people with binoculars, or simply staring into the brush." There, among the large green leaves is the Scott's Oriole, a brilliant yellow bird, not found in New York, a tourist perhaps. Directly above, on a fire escape, one of our yearling red tailed hawks. Hawks are now common on every street in the Lower East Side.

There is danger for the hawks. In Stuyvesant Park, right in front of Friend's School, where young children play, a packet of Contrac lies in easy reach over a low railing. "It’s not only about the birds....this stuff is on the ground as you can clearly see. What if a dog or worst, a kid picks it up, or someone with bad intentions?" Francois asks. Contrac's active ingredient is Bromadiolone. a second-generation anticoagulant poison. It kills by causing internal hemorrhaging, usually after only a single ingestion. It can cause the death of any animal which feeds on a dead rodent which has ingested a lethal dose of the poison. In the early winter, Parks Department spokesperson Jesslyn Tiano stated that Parks follows "the Department of Health's rodenticide recommendations and primarily use products containing Bromadiolone, which has a lower secondary risk value than Difethialone."

Red Tailed Hawk easts a mouse in Tompkins Square Park - Photo Lorcan Otway

The Zoological Society of London publishes a "good practice guide for landowners in England" called "Helping Red Kites". Like the red tailed hawk, the red kite is a raptor which feeds on rodents. In this guide, it states that birds of prey are "particularly susceptible to secondary poisoning as they will eat poisoned rodents and ingest the poisons they contain. These poisons may kill [the raptor] immediately, or they may accumulate in the body and cause eventual death." The article specifically names Bromadiolone. Parks’ Deputy Commissioner Liam Kavanagh states that they, "suspend baiting when there is nesting or a significant level of daily activity by predatory birds. Baiting is still suspended at Tompkins Square Park, but there and in other places, if rodent activity spiked and other measures were ineffective, we would resume some level of pesticide use."

However, there seems to be a gap in the sighting of predatory birds and action to stop poison programs. "There must be something we can do, call the Mayor's office, the city council?" says Dennis Edge, his voice tinged with concern for the birds which he cares so much about. He hopes people will understand the danger to the birds, and value what these birds mean to so many in the city.

Deputy Commissioner Kavanagh explains that, "Parks works with the Department of Health on rodent control strategies and follows Integrated Pest Management principles that include monitoring pest levels, eliminating food sources and harborage and judicious use of chemical controls that have the least possible risk to people, property, domestic animals and urban wildlife. There is no single perfect chemical control, but the materials we use, in combination with the other principles allow for safe and effective pest control. We do not use pesticides that pose the greatest overall potential risk to birds or mammals. We use low hazard bait formulations and application techniques when applying pesticides in parks and consider other environmental factors when deciding on the most appropriate control measures" Quintox is not an anticoagulant, and there is no antidote. The toxicant mobilizes calcium from the bones into the bloodstream producing heart failure. Quintox's state that "Since birds don't have bone marrow this product is the best choice for use around birds of prey (Eagles and Hawks)." Deputy Commissioner Kavanagh points out that, "both bromadiolone (Contrac) and cholecalciferol (Quintox) are categorized as having a low to moderate primary risk to birds. Cholecalciferol has a lower secondary risk rating for birds, but poses a different problem for mammals that are found in parks far more frequently and in much higher numbers than predatory birds. There is no antidote for cholecalciferol, as there is for bromadiolone, and accidental acute poisoning from cholecalciferol in dogs, cats and squirrels and other mammals can result in prolonged and especially painful deaths. Kavanaugh states that they do suspend baiting programs in parks where predatory birds are nesting or regularly visiting. However, these birds are seen constantly hunting on all the side streets of the Lower East Side.

Red Tailed Hawk, Fire escape - Photo Lorcan Otway

Maggie Rufo, volunteer Assistant Director of the Hungry Owl (Hungryowl.org) project holds that Quintox's statement that birds do not have bone marrow is not accurate. "Most of the bones in a bird's body are 'hollow' but not all. They do have some bones with marrow, but not nearly as many as mammals . If Quintox stops calcium absorption in rats and mice, both mammals, does it do so to other mammals like raccoons, foxes, your pet cat or dog? If so, then it too, is not really safe for use around animals."

Children do have bone marrow, Even in "tamper proof" bait stations, the safety of these poisons is only as effective as the care with which it is applied. The sight of poison packets in easy reach in our parks leads me to ask if this is the best solution? Rufo questions the reliability of the tests which are used to establish the safety of the products. An example of how secondary hazard evaluation of poisons is carried out as follows. A laboratory gave fifty-ppm bromadiolone oat bait to California ground squirrels. After they died, they were fed to coyotes. Each coyote ate one a day for five days. Some sickened but none died. However, in nature, the primary target animal seldom eats only a fifty percent lethal amount. As reported in the Villager, experts explain that in single dose anticoagulant poisons, the target animal often eats many times the lethal dose, which is why animals such as mountain lions, which feed on the target animal die. According to Maggie Rufo, In San Francisco, exclusion and sanitation are used as alternative solutions.

Exclusion, the sealing off of buildings, is hard in New York City. In San Francisco, a big problem was uncovered trash cans in the parks and the fact that they were not emptied frequently enough. Another very big contributor to the problem were people who fed animals in the park, feeding birds and squirrels is in effect feeding rats and mice as well

In the past, cities hired people who trained terriers, dogs which provided efficient rat control without costing us hawks, and owls, or dogs and cats. Even today, dogs are used for environmentally sensitive rodent control. In Australia, Michael Bloch is the author and owner of Green Living Tips.com, an online resource for earth friendly tips. (http://www.greenlivingtips.com/) He states that, "Fox/Jack Russell terriers are some of the best mousers and ratters around; far superior to cats. Terriers do not play with rodents like cats will, they kill them extraordinarily quickly and move on to the next one. I've seen old newsreel footage of mouse plagues in Australia where terriers were let loose in barns and the numbers of rodents they dispatched within a very short space of time is incredible. Unlike cats, terriers can also be trained very easily to discriminate between animals. . Our dogs will allow birds to eat directly from their food bowls; but any mouse that may approach is very quickly dealt with." Perhaps nature is a good teacher to look to in learning balance in New York's environment.

A Quaker Family's Thanksgiving...

2008-11-27T01:13:00.001-08:00

Yes, it is that time of year when people in the United States, or America, as we call it, give thanks that we are not Mexican or Canadian. We like to share our traditions with the rest of the world... whether or not they want them. And so, in that loving tradition (see the ballad "Bonny May") I share my family's Thanksgiving story again, with our non American, or as many say, our un-American friends...

Ever since the first Otway fell off the boat into the new world, we celebrate Thanksgiving by remembering the story of the first thanksgiving. They youngest child, generally the only one sober enough to speak, tells this story, before joining the adults in a gin and tonic.... Story of the First Thanksgiving.

It was the night before Christmas, and the Pilgrims where feeling a bit peckish, after the long swim from England, the Mayflower having hit an iceberg and sank. Captain Smith ordered the woman and children into the life boats first, as he knew that there were not enough boats for all, an old tradition in the British maritime, only to find they had forgotten the life boats all together.

Although they were still in the Themes Estuary and a scant 10 minute swim to Wapping, they decided that as long as they were already wet, they'd go for it and struck out for New York. On the way they talked it over and decided that as long as they were going through all the trouble they might as well swim to Massachusetts so that their grand kids would all be rich New Englanders in stead of poor New Yorkers, and who wanted to live in a city where the Mayor was a bad tempered Dutch guy with a wooden leg who called the place New Amsterdam anyway, so I am getting off the point, it was time for dinner.

So there were Indians there also, John Smith and his wife Pocahontas, because she was tired of her dad chasing her husband John around with an axe every time he made the same old joke "Hey, did the White guys pay the rent yet?".Christopher Columbus got the place of honor at the head of the table. He was very old at this point, and probably dead, but was such a figure of respect that no one told him, but rather made sure the head of the table was down wind from everyone and they didn't ask Chris to carve the turkey or they'd all starve. The Turkeys were much larger then, as it was a long time ago and they were still evolving from their Dinosaur ancestors, so one or two fed all of New England, and there was still some left to make clothes out of.

So, now you know why we pardon a Turkey at the white house every year, then chop its head off and eat it. Happy Thanks Giving to all and to all a good night, after a little Alka-Seltzer

Cheers
Lorcan

Have we plowed under our Quaker Utopia and salted the earth?

2008-11-22T17:54:00.000-08:00

I have been eldered at times, for saying that "Quaker" schools are elitist and exclusive. Well, I must say, on one hand, I have a certain pride that the Obama family has chosen Sidwell Friends. On the other, I feel positively reinforced by NBC and CBS referring to the school as elite and exclusive.

Now, I find myself thinking, what part of simplicity and equality is described by elite and exclusive. Even if our schools were exclusive to Quakers, they would not be in keeping with the Quaker spirit. But, as they are so exclusive to exclude our own children should they not be clever or wealthy...

We are a utopian faith. It is the utopian nature of our faith that gave some Friends the strength to challenge the establishment of their day, including the elders of their own Meetings, to set about on a journey several hundred years ago, with others, not of our faith, a journey that resulted in there being a president elect, Obama. We dreamed above the prejudices and realities of our days. We dreamed an impossible dream, that we could end slavery, because it was simply wrong.

Today, we bend to both the "realities" of our day, and the prejudice based on testing and expectations, to exclude from Quaker schools, Quaker children for a variety of reasons. How sad, that we realize the best of our dreams for the rest of the world, while selling so cheaply the most understandable dream of our spiritual foreparents, that no Quaker child would be denied a Quaker education.

We are the artisan who makes something so precious we cannot own it. Unfortunately that things is close to the center of our faith - and means so much to the future of that faith. We cannot raise our children in this particular village, as we are in the process of selling it to the wealthy neighbors.

Are We Quakers a Community of Communion or Consumption?

2008-11-14T00:45:00.001-08:00

What makes a Quaker Meeting a Quaker community? For some, it is meeting for an hour or so a week in a little silence and some chatter about liberal ideals or new age notions of spirit. Once that is accomplished the Meeting can get down to business like the rest of America in what has been called with humor but no irony, "the latter days of Babylon."

But where do we begin? Let's begin at the theological beginning ... shall it be the latter part of Exodus or the beginning of Genesis. We are, after all, one of the many streams which trickle down from the spring of Judaism. Starting with Genesis, Adam and Eve are told not to eat of the tree of wisdom, as it is against God's plan, or breaks God's rule, depending if one is a student of Hillel or Shamai. I would say a student of Hillel would say that is separates Adam and Eve from God, and in not cooperating - not being in unity with God's plan, it is an act of consumption, not an act of communion.

In the latter part of Exodus, a people who see their early history as one of enslavement commit acts of conquest and out right genocide in the name of God. How does one go forward after that with a sense of rightiousness? Well, one lays the responsibility for the orders on God... and tries to do better in the future... possibly. This seems to me to be a cheep short answer, but at 3 AM, it is the best I can do... to begin to get at do nothing to another which is abhorrent to thyself... a statement of communion rather than consumption.

I spent time among hunter/gatherer people in the far north east of Canada. There the difference between communion and consumption was rather profoundly visible. Innu hunters never cut trees in a straight line, the sin of having to take trees was mitigated by doing so in a way which preserved Nitassinan, the land. There was no sport hunting, hunting was a communion with the caribou, the seals, the salmon, the geese, the porcupines, the moose and when the equation went the other way, the protective spirit, the bear took you to your safe afterlife.

Innu fishers "poaching" on their own land which they would share and others would take. Photo Lorcan Otway 1994

Over the years I watched the coming of the dams, and in their wake, drugs, alcohol, freedom from the work of production of consumption commodities became unemployment, cut off, and bought off from the traditions of communion living. I watched the march of poverty and consumption north and east devouring the souls of people as well as the land.

Power lines from Hydro dams built along rivers vital to Innu hunting Photo Lorcan Otway 1994

I had seen it before. Living in the west of Ireland in the seventies, people spoke of the coming of poverty to Ireland. The generation just before had no consumer products and felt itself complete and fulfilled.

Tommy Gibbons - Irish Small Farmer 1977 Photo Lorcan Otway

The generation of the seventies felt the sting of third world poverty. There were still coops, and resistance to the promise of wealth through common market ... but I watched as salmon fishers became salmon poachers and up north and across the Irish sea, Scotland fisher folk had their boats ordered up to Scandinavia to be broken up and consumed along with great chunks of traditional culture, but the consumer culture of the common market.

Ireland 1978 Photo Lorcan Otway

Now, here I am. One of a few voices asking Friends to consider what it is to have a Quaker school, a Quaker meeting. I am met with a chorus of voices which chant the liberal agendas of the school associated with our Meeting, voices which never give an answer how it can be a Friend's school and exclude children from our Meeting who are judged not to be intelligent enough to go to a Quaker school. Since when do we only call the clever children in our Meetings "Quaker?" And in all of this, the school, where it is hard to find a Quaker in the faculty or the student body, consumes more and more of the physical space of our Meeting's property, and as happened among the Innu and among fisher folk in Ireland and Scotland, consumed the soul of our people at the same time.

Living off the land in Ireland - a harvest of communion 1978 Photo Eugenie Clare Gilmore-Otway

We may as well be corporately owned by Pepsi and sold in oatmeal boxes, I suppose.

Do all who go to war live by the sword? The Politics of God part 2

2008-11-07T00:30:00.000-08:00

Photo Lorcan Otway 1977 Belfast Ireland

This is part two of a conversation started, which I post in the post before this, it becomes, part two of The Politics of God.

In answer to my reply on Obama and unity, Bruce's response cuts right to the key of Quaker faith in my opinion, and is a really insightful place to be...

He writes:

Fine words my friend. I know God does not hate homosexuals nor do I have any hate. But I believe He does not condone it nor do I believe He would put someone in office that would not fight for life that he had created. As for war.... I'm a little torn on that. We are suppose to help those in need ( Iraq). Although that should be the intention, Whether that was the case or not I can't say. Now there's the problem that we are there. We can't just leave them unprotected. I believe that would be wrong even if the beginning was of wrong intentions.God has allowed many wars and protected His people fighting them. But then there is Jesus " He who lives by the sword dies by the sword." But maybe some who have taken to war don't really live by the sword but have just taken it up to defend themselves or the weak.

Thanks Lor.
Bruce

I always find I start with "Well...." If we were in the same room, this would be drawing in a breath and out again... I will put aside the question of does God condone homosexual practice or not. I think the second part of the question raises a question with which I have wrestled from the time I was convinced of the faith in which I was raised.

I have found, as a history student, that I cannot point to a single war which was fought for the reasons given to the soldiers, or won the result promised to them. Most wars, if not all wars, including wars of aggression, are described by both sides as being fought to protect the right of the a people who need defending. The civil war did not bring freedom to African Americans - rather it was a struggle, not unlike that continuing today, over how much power the federal government has and how much power the individual states have. It was a war to determine if we are a confederacy, or a republic. The answer was not very clear. The limitations on the rights of Americans of African ancestry for the hundred years after the war shows that the rhetoric of liberty was simply a banner to make a crusade of a bloody and terrible war.

In the same light, not a single nazi death camp was liberated as a goal of the Second World War. Rather, our allies and our own nation took no steps to stop the trains going to those camps, and they were only freed when our troops happened upon them. Further the genocide against Romany people continued and continues as I write this. I could name war after war, from Ireland to Africa where soldiers fight or fought for truths and have been led to war for power that will never be shared with them.

I am not very persuaded that we went to war in Iraq for the sake of the people of Iraq. And I agree with thee, that now we are there, it is hard to leave. However, I am also not convinced that to continue a violent struggle is the best way to leave.

It takes courage and brilliance to find a way out of great darkness. Lyndon Johnson seems to have understood this. His strategies for pulling us away from the violence of the struggle over apartheid in the United States was brilliantly done. At the same time as he brought force to bear to enforce federal law, he injected huge amounts of economic opportunity into the American south, creating the "New South." If I were to go on for pages about this, I would write of a new third common market as part of the way out of Iraq and Afghanistan ... another post perhaps.

The point is that war does not solve problems. People fight until the cost of fighting brings one side or the other, or both to that point of exhaustion or loss that both decide speaking and bargaining is a better way. I believe a loving God would prefer we simply start with that negotiation.

The argument some make that the other side started any war is often historically hard to prove. This nation has been involved in destabilizing North Africa and Persia, and they have been involved in fighting us, oh ... hundreds of years. We can begin more recently with the American involvement in the overthrow of the democratic government of Iran to place the Shaw in power, or Jefferson's secret mission to over throw the Bey of Tripoli, or the piracy of that Bey... there simply is not a start to most wars.

So, I am rather convinced that as a political problem solving device, war simply does not work. As a mater of faith, war has not been about truth, and so I disavow war.

To paraphrase thy question, would God put someone in power who is "pro choice?" Well, that is also a complex question. In terms of a God who protects us from pain, does God cause earthquakes, or is there a force of evil which does everything which is painful to us? I think not.

Rather, this question is core to the Greco Roman view of morality, as opposed to the Hebraic view of morality. In the Jewish tradition sin is more a matter of separation, destruction of a relationship between the individual and others and God, than in the Greco Roman tradition, which might enter Christianity, not through Yeshua called Jesus, but through Paul. The way one approaches the question of sin frames the question.

In the Hebrew scriptures, in Numbers 5, one can find support for a belief that in the Hebraic tradition, for thousands of years, leaders came to power who believed that abortion was a sacrament in the face of a wife's unfaithfulness. Several modern English language bibles translate this now, in a way to defeat this interpretation, but to me, it seems to be one of the few unambiguous references to abortion in either the Christian scriptures or the Hebraic scriptures.

The interpretation that this is, in fact a reference to abortion, fits with the concept in the Hebraic tradition that the avoidance of sin is found in repentance, atonement and forgiveness. One cannot live a life in a world fraught with dilemmas, without harming another, so one mitigates the harm by looking within, acting to heal and forgiving.

The Greco Roman world was about order and simply following the state. It is impossible for me to imagine a moment such as Yeshua or Jesus' interaction with the woman at the well in the context of the state religions of Greece or Rome. Rather, the setting aside of the rule to make a new relationship is the core of a major theme in Hebraic tradition as defined by Hillel, "do nothing to another that is abhorrent to thyself, that is the Torah and the rest is commentary - now go and study."

For me this does not answer the question of which side a present and guiding God prefers. Rather, I think it leads to a degree of humility when I sit at a table with others who believe one way or the other. I think the best way to walk with righteousness before God, rather than to cloak ourselves in self-righteousness, is to follow our own light and teach by our actions, rather than pointing fingers and denying that God backs the actions of others. I try not to cast the first stone... or the next.

Thine in the light and thank'ee Bruce

What are God's Politics?

2008-11-06T01:30:00.001-08:00

As a comment to the above photo, I recieved the following and replied as follows...

Bruce Thomas Benda said: Why do WE need to redouble OUR commitment? I thought you all voted for this guy because you thought he has it covered. Even though we don't have a great understanding how. Just the HOPE. Why would God send someone who won't fight for helpless unborn babies or that supports gays or associates with a killer and PLO supporter. Not very Godly. I was just wondering. Nice photo though.

Well, Bruce:
No one has it all covered. As the son of a former coal miner, I hope President Obama will learn that there is no such thing as clean coal, and as a Quaker, I hope he learns that fear and the word enemy are related, and as Jesus reminded us, the way to perfect love is to abandon fear, and stop making war.

But, the world is not about absolutes. When we assign to God our own political beliefs and prejudices, though it might be a wonderful rhetorical device, after all, who can argue with God?! It does put God in a much smaller box than the infinite nature God must choose to be. In short, a God who can be quoted is hardly likely to be God at all.

This does not mean God does not speak to all -- in that still small voice, ever present voice of love. I am not sure that God does not love gay people or the PLO, anymore than God once allowed a world where people of Obama's complexion were once held in slavery. After the events of September 11, an Innu friend of mine sent me a letter reminding me that God sends these things to teach us to fly, not as a punishment.

What we do in the darkness of pain, such as that caused by the struggles of Israelis and Palestinians leads us to love and light, or fear and loss. To respond to the darkness of fear with violence digs the hole of revenge deeper and deeper, no matter which side you feel calls you to justice. War never seems to me to have been an answer, it always seemed to me to have been the problem expressed.

It is not an easy thing to live our faith, what ever that faith may be. It is not easy to face our fears with love, to grow towards those who cause us pain. Religious faith and politics are remarkably hard to juggle together. We Quakers turned away from that attempt after our failed attempt at a theocratic state, in the Pennsylvania colony. We found that politics is seldom about truth, it is about power.

I am very fond of your photos as well, they share a great deal of light.
Finally, a unified nation, like a unified family of God, does not mean one where we all see things the same, just that we eat at the same table, and feed each other.

In the light of God who loves us all
lor

A Peaceful and Peaceable Goodbye

2008-06-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

War happens when two righteously angry people go at each other. I choose not to do that. It is likely that this blog ends here with this observation and prayer, please stop fighting, each one of you, one at a time.

Dearly with love

Lor

There is a danger in responcibility without authority

2008-06-24T00:18:00.000-07:00

For some reason, perhaps our fear of hierarchy, we as a meeting became authority adverse. Nature always fills a vacuum, so in reaction to our Meetings lack of proper application of authority, individuals have sought to put authority in positions - Trustees, Clerks - School Committees ... everything other than where Fox and the Children of Light sought authority, God's instructions to a gathered Meeting.

Some Friends say that I am over fixated on process. However, I have learned, taking care of a parent with Alzheimer's, that responsibility without authority is dangerous. Now, we as a Meeting may decide that we no longer fix our authority in God, or that God no longer speaks to a gathered Meeting, in these times, and that these times are defined by our culture, not our faith ... and give over authority. I, for one, believe in our faith, and trust in God, and so, I hope and pray we return to the application of our process.

When the school acts, under the color of our name, and is not guided by the authority of our traditional process -- we are in danger of the statements of the school's practices defining us to the world as a religious community. The question, "who are these Children of Light?" would then be answered by our schools application process, by many things, about which some Friends feel a lack of unity. Those Friends feel we need to be gently guided towards our decisions by our testimonies as Friends.

When God breaths out, Quakers breath in.

2008-06-12T02:40:00.000-07:00

When someone asks me what is my faith, as a member of the Religious Society of Friends, how do we worship and what do we believe, I generally say, that being a Friend is to empty the cup of one's ego, and invite God to fill that cup.

Harold Bloom wrote that in ancient Hebraic explanations of creation, God breathed in, Zim, and then breathed out all that is, Zum. I have been thinking, a lot of late, why does our faith community work, and when does it not work. It works when we understand, that in breathing in, God took stock of God, a reflective moment, not unlike the process Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr. wrote of in the Letter from the Birmingham Jail. God goes into God's self, as Dr. King said we take stock of self in the beginning of a movement for social change. We look inside. Zim. Then, Dr. King explains, we act - Zum. Then we negotiate: (listen) Zim... (speak) Zum.

In the Gospel of Thomas, I am often fond of recalling, Yeshua is asked how one knows the Children of Light? He answers, "By movement and Rest." Again he is restating the old understanding of God, Zum - movement, Zim - rest. Before the proactive moment of creation, is the reflective moment of taking stock, becoming true self.

George Fox said of us, that we go joyfully through the world, greeting that of God in all we meet. This is a remarkable observation, as to meet God in another, one has to put ego in one's self aside.

So, in a practical way, what does this mean in how we live our lives as Friends together, and do our business? How do we seek unity in our work lives together in a Meeting? We sit, silently, and look within - Zim. We seek before we speak - Zim. We speak our light in that Meeting. Zum. We listen, deeply to what the other says - Zim, we take it in, hold it. If we don't understand, we ask, we question - Zim. Then we speak - Zum.

This process of going inside ourselves to empty our selves is our religious tradition. Traditional cultures act in a reactive mode. They, we, do things as our parents did, and we do not sit down at the drawing-board to reinvent the wheel each time there is something to move. We act in the manner of our traditional culture, as we say, we act in the way of Friends.

But, we Friends, are rare in our lack of a minister or pope, who would then tell us how to act within our traditional culture. We have a clerk, who simply directs that we should listen and speak, should rest and move. In that moment of movement after rest, in that moment of Zum, we are a proactive culture. As Richard Accetta-Evans says, we are a radical faith at that moment. In the moment of our breathing out, we go from being a quaint folk, sitting silently on wooden benches, to a people who inherit the torch of the abolitionists going out to shed light on the darkness of slavery, the torch of the peaceful activists who shed light on the darkness of war, the torch of those who went to meet with Hitler to shed light on the darkness of nazism. When we act as a meeting, it should be with that radical intention to live in justice, to live in the light of God, to live free of the constraints of conventions of evil and apathy, to let our lives and our actions speak -- not from our ego, but from that light which we see in others, that light we seek collectively.

There are times Friends have told me to do this or that, it is how the real world is... I listen, but, I am afraid it carries little weight. It is simply the reactive voice of tradition. For me, being a Friend is to stand on tradition when it comes to approaching light - Zim. But, in breathing out, in walking in the world but not being of the world, that is the proactive moment - the moment of Zum. It is knowing that the statement do this because it is the way it is expected it will be done, is not seeking God's direction.

So, how will we know the Children of Light. By rest and movement. Zim - Zum.

Taking Care of a Small Bit of Frontier

2008-06-09T10:39:00.000-07:00

Perhaps someday I will be able to share with you all, my past grief and concern for which there seemed no hope. I can say, small gains are being made.

What I can say, is that there is comfort and even small joy on maintaining a patch of land on the frontier, doing small things towards great ends. I have found that my mother is ill, and have not written much, as I am taking care of her for most of every day. I make her breakfast, do her bills, organize her business and care, take her to dinner, and there is great joy in that.

There is joy in taking care of my father's life's work, his small piece of what was once a dangerous frontier. When we moved here, each member of the family was threatened with violence, we were all robbed at knife point, gun point. My father was stabbed eleven times, I had a bottle broken over my head in a robbery ... I saw a number of people stabbed, shot, even die on the street, but we stayed. There was no word, "gentrification," as we were not the gentry. We were working class, even below that much of the time, building, tending, growing.

I think of the hours, days, years, my father cleaned the sidewalk in front of our theater. I was thinking of this, when my mother came down, as I swept and washed the sidewalk, as I do often... She said that the neighborhood was in such danger. So many of the little places she went are now gone. "I'd walk a block to the woman who would tailor my clothes... " I reminded her of the danger of the old days. She told me I can't change the neighborhood, that the developers are tearing it all down. I told her that we are still on a frontier. However, we are now fighting new dangerous people, people who are destroying the value of all we built here. My father did not set out to change the neighborhood by making others do anything. He only tended his small patch of the world, keeping it clean, well run, hospitable, and let his life speak in that way.

Our little homestead is still surrounded by wilderness, now a wilderness of heartless developers, gentrification, the gentry attempting to force us to give up what workers built. Knives and guns are replaced by worthless glittering promises. But, I hope someday, my life might speak, the way my father's did, to maintain well, a small patch of the world, so that my family and neighbors can be comfortable, happy and safe. It feels rather lonely, not having a child at my side, as my father did, who I could feel would someday do the same. But, there is some joy in the moment.

A Conservative Hicksite's Manifesto

2008-05-29T04:43:00.000-07:00

A Romany "Gypsy" friend and I were sitting last night, discussing this and that - a project we are working on together. I asked him "Who are the biggest thieves in the world?" Without a moment's hesitation he said, "The American Gyzhen." The non-Romany Americans. "Exactly right..." I said. I had just come from a meeting of "progressive" Quakers where I watched them ... no, in point of fact, I walk out on them ... because they were in the process of buying and selling my faith.
As many of you know, New York Meetings are in turmoil over Friend's Seminary wishing to become a separate corporation. This school which excludes Quakers who are not smart enough to fit in, this school which ignores the Meeting when making millions of dollars of "improvements" to a building designed to be plain in my generation ... is being given what it asks for, "because if we don't they will take it anyway, so we have to come up with a plan that keeps us in the loop..." I am told. When I try and tell these Friends that "no" is also a Quakerly response, and begin to explain that our faith is one of the few which has a mix of traditional reactive thinking, as well as progressive proactive thinking, but it only works if we apply Quaker process - coming to unity... I am told that "no, this is the only plan." When I ask Friends to repeat back to me, what my point is, I am told, not only can they not do that, they have no intention to try and listen and understand. And so... I acknowledge, New Ageism, Progressivism, has robbed yet another culture, as Capitalist progressives stole Indian land, and then New Ageist robbed their spiritual traditions, the same thing is happening in New York Quaker Meetings.
I proclaim myself a traditionalist and a conservative. Not the phony new-age-I-just-discovered-Jesus-I-am-a-Wilberite silliness of the new jumping on the third reawakening band wagon of neo-Conservative Quakers... but, rather, I am a dyed in the wool, don't sell my faith OR my Meetinghouse Hicksite, and a rather pissed off one at that this morning.
Flame away...
In love and disgust
Lorcan
PS When the Friend's Seminary architect showed their plans for the re-building of parts of our Meetinghouse's room for worship, to accomodate STORAGE! for the schools stuff... the plans were titled "Renovation of Friend Seminary's Meetinghouse". Does that not just say it all? No only does the tail wag the dog, the tail is chewing the hair off the dog as well.

No hope, no future

2008-02-22T14:31:00.000-08:00

There comes a time when there is no way ahead, no hope, no future ... what do you do then?

Please help save the life of Vijay Wijesundera

2008-02-06T06:43:00.000-08:00

Consulate General of Sweden
One Dag Hammearskjold Plaza
885 Second Ave.
45th Fl.
NYC
10017-2201

Dear Friend, the Consul General of Sweden:

I am writing to you under the weight of my terrible concern for Vijay Wijesundera. In his application to be resettled in Sweden, his dossier number is: 9360718.

He is an attender at the 15th Street Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers.

Vijay came to us when he arrived in the United States as a refugee from Sri Lanka. He is a talented, well educated, young man, who feels completely devoted to the cause of peace. In my understanding of his present torment, the fact that the United States makes war on other nations which have not attacked this nation makes it impossible for him to live a complete life here. He will not work and pay taxes to further the war effort, nor will he marry or do anything to deepen his ties here, so as not to be drawn into being, in essence, trapped here.

Today, 02\06\2008, Vijay is now on the fortieth day of a fast and I fear for his life. It would be a great loss to the world to lose this young man as a result of his objection to war. I pray that your peaceful and good nation will reconsider and welcome this young man, quickly, as there is little time left to him.

In the light of God's love,

Lorcan Otway
Member of the Committee of Ministry and Counsel
New York Quarterly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
Member of the Pastoral Care Committee
of the Fifteenth Street Monthly Meeting of the same.

cc: McGranag@UNHCR.org
Anne-Marie McGranaghanUNHCRRe:case# ROW # 68859

I Am Called To Take Up Abolition in America Once Again

2008-01-20T03:01:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends:

There are two Friends and friends, who I truly love more than life itself. We differ on the subject of slavery in America and the use of unfair labor in China. Tonight, I find myself not able to sleep, listening to the windchimes of the downstairs neighbors. And rather than cursing their windchimes, I find I am seeking words to convince Friends that we must address the reality of slavery in the USA once again.

Our Meeting's shelter uses sheets cleaned by prison labor. I cannot bring myself to touch those packages marked by the label of the slavery which brings it to our place of worship. Friends tell me that those in prison must have work to do, and that the place to address the slavery of prison is at the source, at the inequality of opportunity which leads to lack of equal access to jobs and easy access to drugs.

And yet, I see in these answers a similarity to the past notion that we lift Africans out of ignorance by ... well ... the "well intentioned kindness practiced on Quaker plantations," as the member of our faith said who once claimed ownership over other humans. Like Elias Hicks, I cannot sway these Friends from their conviction that the product of prison labor is not a convenience which we must afford ourselves and there belief that labor is good and meaningful for the laborer who is not free.

And, yet, Friend Elias' final point on slavery, which won out almost two hundred years ago returns to mind. No human entered slavery other than at the point of a sword or a gun, and so, we Friends who deny ourselves prize goods, cannot own these humans and call our selves Friends and Chlidren of Light.

No human behind bars came to that place, other than at the point of a gun and wearing the chains of the wars of crime and the wars on crime. The simple truth is that the production of the prison system are prize goods and we Friends must not touch them.

For that matter, the production of a nation which murders trade unionists outright, shoots them on the factory floor or drags them away to disappear in lonely secret places where extrajudicial killings silence the voice of labor -- such goods are also prize goods and more than advised against in our Quaker traditions, they are forbidden to our souls in the statement of our Peace Testimony.

Let others make war, and let others constructively engage the slave state. I can endorse the inroads, but I cannot touch the product stained with the blood of victims of the savagery of war and slavery.
Lovingly,Lorcan

May I be faithful to the uncertainty of our Quaker faith

2008-01-16T00:38:00.000-08:00

A reply to a request to consider going to two upcoming Powell House retreats has led me to this post ... which is that reply. I thought there might be some value in sharing it with Friends. I hope Friends think so as well.
I always appreciate listening to Arthur Larabe. I have rather a well developed idea about clerking, but hearing others and a tune up is always a good thing. As is sometimes obvious, I am led to older forms of the traditions and culture of our faith and find in that not only did our forebearers show a good deal of wisdom, there is a great practicality in these customs of faith as well. We had to balance the unfettered freedom of the individual spirit with the corporate need to seek together in worship as well as work. This was reinforced by a number of small things. For example, removing one's hat during the message of another Friend during worship reminds one to give weight to the process of listening and hearing. I suppose the key is to be confident of seeking, and ever open to uncertainty of one's own rightness. One older form, which I think might be helpful to consider bringing back, is not to say "yes" or "no" to affirm a minute. An older tradition was to say, "I hope so" or "I hope not." In this form each of us is reminded that we do not know we are right, even as a gathered Meeting, but rather, we hope we approach truth together. It is one more reminder that there is no human leadership in a Quaker community, only eldership as we seek the leadership of truth. Eldership does not equal leadership, only a guidance to each other that together, listening and speaking with care, we might open ourselves to our best hope, a truth.
As to difficult people. Well, personally, I hope I am speaking with some truth led wisdom, when I say that I find the growing cult of individualism some have commented on within modern Meetings, is often tied to individuals being certain about their ability to control property. Corporately we might remember the old Quaker sense of uncertainty. Even "experts" in a field, in a Quaker community might consider the power of uncertainty and placing the power of authority in a truth with we must approach with the greatest humility -- with hope that we, together are correct, rather than individually from the hubris of our credentials. We live in a world today which places great weight on credentials - I am most dubious of my own "authority" when asked to consider something from the weight of those parchment recognitions of my learning -- the dear spirit of Mary Dyer reminds me that authority is seldom my truth.
The matter of Friends who are to some degree imbalanced from illness is another subject that we all must approach with humility and love and a good dose of hope in our ability to do the right thing in the face of that challenge.
So ... this, I hope, speaks to my interest in these subjects, and my hope that I might someday grow to help to be one of the voices of eldership which brings our Meeting to a greater sense of hope and peace.
Thine, very dearly in our funny old faith
Lor

An Answer To Davd Carl's Question - Democracy of God in Quakerism (or lack thereof)

2007-12-13T01:43:00.000-08:00

David's comment to my most recent post assumed that I was not in unity with a proposal and what happened next... Well, Friend, it was far more complicated than that. I apologise before hand to non-Quaker readers, as this must seem very complicated and odd with talk about quarterly and monthly meetings, and to my Quaker readers, also an apology, as I have tried to make this simple, but the story is rather complex...

Some thoughts first. There is always a struggle in any society to keep the fashions of the day from replacing the transcendent values of our founders. For some in the Religious society of Friends this is a struggle over doctrine. For me, however, it is a struggle over process. What makes us unique is the way we do business by laboring towards unity.

The USA today has become obsessed with secrecy, in order to insure outcome. Many have noted that one cannot have a functioning democracy without all the facts being laid on the table. The struggle in the USA over freedoms of the press, for example the attempt to suppress the publication of the "Pentagon Papers" by Richard Nixon, in order to hide the real policies concerning the extension of the Vietnam war into Laos and Cambodia pales at the classification as secret everything possible, the most mundane business of government today.

Times like these affect the day to day thinking about business as usual, even in Quaker Meetings. The security conscious state has led, for example, our Quaker school to festoon itself with a large number of video surveillance cameras ... compare this with the faith of the Amish in Nicole Mines, where the horrible events of last year did not change them at all. We struggle with concerns that our school committee is not allowed to share much of the mundane business with the Meeting and has closed meetings.

Recently, a nomination was held up because of anonymous and unspesific concerns raised to the nominating committee, in the case of this nomination, our Pastoral Care committee (Our Meeting as a bifurcated Ministry so instead of Ministry and Council, we have a Ministry and Worship committee and a Pastoral Care Committee). Placed before the full monthly Meeting, during a meeting for worship with a concern for business there was some real concern expressed about this.

Coincidentally, the clerk of Pastoral Care, was nominated to be clerk of the Meeting at the same meeting. Our Meeting has had some difficulty with the whole nominating process. When there was an objection to a nominee for clerk, it split the Meeting in half and we could not come to clearness on a clerk for 18 months. Frankly, I think this was all because of outcome driven Meetings and poor process in general. In response to this we created a process whereby any objection to a nominee must be addressed, not to the floor of the meeting, but to the nominee and or the nominating committee.

Well, the nomination of the Clerk of Pastoral Care raised some concerns over amalgamation of power in a single person in our Meeting. There had been a tradition of nominees stepping down from other weighty clerkships in order to concentrate on the work of Clerk of the Meeting as well as to preserve the Clerk's position of neutrality.

This was raised on the floor of the meeting (not by me), and our Meeting was not in unity on wither or not there should be a rule about this. Further, it was pointed out, the proposed clerk was a member of the school committee, a committee about which there is a concern over undue secrecy. So, it was decided that the next business meeting, we would first address the concern about the proposed rule, then have the second reading of the nomination. I felt this was bad form, but I did not stand in the way of it, as it foreclosed meeting with Nominations, if the decision went either way on the proposed rule.

Well, for a variety of reasons, most who objected to a clerk of the meeting being clerk of pastoral care were out of town for this past business meeting. Our present clerk opened the issue stating that concerns were raised over "Meeting clerks being clerk of weighty Quarterly committees." The school committee is a Quarterly committee. And that in this case the issue was moot as the nominee had asked release from the School Committee. As such, could we put over discussion of the proposed rule until the next months meeting.

I said that I was not in unity with the proposal as the request for release only cured half the concerns raised at the previous meeting. It left an important issue unresolved which I would have addressed to nominations, if I had known before hand that the agenda would have been revised without previous notice, and lacking that notice, we are now asked to decide on a nomination without full knowledge of governing events, as most of the objections centered on the clerk of pastoral care ( a monthly meeting committee, not a quarterly committee) being also clerk of the Meeting.

This alone, the idea of manipulating the agenda, not only is an outcome based maneuver, but removes the process of building on the light of previous meetings. I just think it is not becoming of our tradition of well meaning in our attempts at real unity rather than manufactured consent.
I have no objection to the outcome, and support this new clerk, but I am offended to the marrow of my bones and roots of my faith at the process which brought this about. I also extend to the outgoing clerk the best assumption that this all might have been oversight. However, especially in the light of a deeply expressed concern more thought should have been given as well as care, so that even the appearance of manipulation should not take place.

Are We Still Quakers When... (and where did we come from)

2007-12-10T04:46:00.000-08:00

Simply put, there were four great epochs of ownership of the commons which bring us to this place. Once, in England, most was owned commonly. Then, in 1066 William the Bastard arrived with a rowdy bunch and proclaimed that all that was commonly held was now owned by the sovereign, and granted to the commoners be used by that sovereign.

Well, it is not a good thing to vest power in one person, and so eventually those bully boys who made this taking possible said, "We want a part of the action, and Magna Carta was drawn up, recognizing that the sovereign was also made up of peers.
Well, as we began the modern age of industrialization, there arouse economic bully boys, who were the industrial bullies who took over the role of enforcers from the fellows in armor, the old peers. They were as good at taking from the commons as a bloke on a horse with a sword and bad intentions for your land.

Out of those times rose a number of simple commoners who said to the old and new enforcers of the king and corporation, "No, this world is owned by God for the good of the common, and we are all equal under God." Some where called Ranters, some Diggers, and some where called Quakers. We were dedicated to recognise God's dirrect ownership over the universe by our actions, not by some warm and fuzzy liberal notions, but by striving to build lives where we recognised the great democracy of seeking God's guidence together in all things. The process of coming to unity is core to what we are as Quakers.

It is this corporate ownership of the institution and the democracy of God which made us unique. There were a lot of Christian sects which sought plainness of one sort of another. Many of these were deeply vested in the modern move to vest power in the merchant peers. For example, Cromwell and his modern army, whose zeal murdered so many in Ireland. The refugees of his army, the Puritans came to New England and hanged Quakers. Christian and plain is not the unique aspect of our founding, the democracy of God in our dealings as a religious organization is our founding nature.

Well, ... even in this world of change, today, there still exists corporate thieves who would take from the common with the lance of economic power, institutional persuasion, and when all else fails, manipulation of process in order to transfer more and more from the commons to the new sovereign, the institution of wealth.

Without going into details, as I am just too tired to put down the story, it is a long one, (time to write a book?) I have watched over the years the infiltration of my Meeting by corporate thinking, again and again I am told by Friends that Quaker process does not work for the day to day economic exigencies of running a school, or even interaction between the school and the Meeting. So, more and more, the school, the tail of the dog of the Meeting, wags that dog, and not only sets us into kayos, but destroys the spiritual integrity of the Meeting, all the while seeking more and more independence from Quakerism, with fewer and fewer restraints from the Meeting, or ties through membership to that Meeting, while insisting that it is a Quaker school, when in fact, it is destroying the core faith of Quakerism in the Meeting, as well as the Quaker values of both. In short, Quakerism is not just being a liberal institution, it is being a body of Friends who do business as Friends, in every matter big or small.

I sat in Meeting for Business today, I cannot call it a Meeting for worship with an intent for business at all, it was simply a hoax, a manipulation of process to transfer more of the common from the many to the few, and the many bought it. I just don't know if Quakerism can survive the times.

I am reminded of the old Phariseean story about process. First of all, let us remember who the Pharisees were. Saducees were literalists, fundamentalists. The believed in the letter of the law, the rule defines the relationship in society. The Pharisees believed that the relationship defined the rule... "Do nothing to another, which you find abhorrent, that is the Torah and the rest is commentary." And as with true liberals today, that liberal voice in Judea, believed that in order to maintain rule and relationship, one needed to have, no unquestionable law, but unquestionable process. The reason is that in common process which treats the weak by the process as the strong, fairness transcends politics and greed. There were a number of judges needed to decide a case in a Phariseean court. For an economic outcome a majority was needed. But, for a physical punishment one needed a unanimous decision. So, one day a man is being tried for a crime that would bring about a sentence of a beating. The court is not unanimous for guilt, when the voice of God is heard saying, "This man is guilty.""My Lord, You are out of order," says the chief judge."How can I be out of order?" replies God."You created this court and set down the procedure, and so, you are out of order."

What greater statement of faith can there be, then to remind God that we all need to approach God in the same process, not the same outcome. It is never about outcome, it is always about process. What greater betrayal of our founding faith than to manipulate process. We poor poor children, who once called ourselves the children of light.

Bob Arihood, a modern American Master

2007-11-23T18:14:00.001-08:00

When I studied photography, back at Prat Institute, in 1974... Phil Perkis took away our camera batteries. He wanted us to use to the camera as a tool over which we, not the battery was in control. After years trying to tell the stories of my America in law, I decided to go back to telling the stories of the world with a camera.
I had worked in Belfast in the seventies, I freelanced regularly in New York for Fairchild, the Voice, the Post and the Daily News. I was comfortable in the fact that if the meter said one thing, I knew where to find my appreciation of the neutral gray ... almost everything was black and white. Well, it was a different world when I got back to things in the 21st Century.
I've been very open with my learning disability. I have a great problem with sequencing. Modern cameras are all about sequencing. I need a hands on showing of how the machine works. there was this fellow who, like Phil who took away my camera battery, showed me what many of the wee nobbies meant on a modern digital camera where all about. His name is Bob Arihood, and most people, if asked who the photographer in the "east village" is, would say Big Bob ... that guy with a camera.
In my neighborhood is found an ever present eye, man with a camera. His photoblog is in my links, "neither more or less." I urge everyone to have a look. Like most artists, he is a bit gruff, and at times one would like to give him a good shake, but one would have to find a HUGE fellow to do that. One would see less in the world, if one did not take time to go have a gander at his blog.

A Quaker Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

Anyone who knows who took this photo, please comment so I might add a credit

Ever since the first Otway fell off the boat into the new world, we celebrate Thanksgiving by remembering the story of the first thanksgiving. They youngest child, generally the only one sober enough to speak, tells this story, before joining the adults in a gin and tonic.... Story of the First Thanksgiving.

It was the night before Christmas, and the Pilgrims where feeling a bit peckish, after the long swim from England, the Mayflower having hit an iceberg and sank. Captain Smith ordered the woman and children into the life boats first, as he knew that there were not enough boats for all, an old tradition in the British maritime, only to find they had forgotten the life boats all together. Although they were still in the Themes Estuary and a scant 10 minute swim to Wapping, they decided that as long as they were already wet, they'd go for it and struck out for New York. On the way they talked it over and decided that as long as they were going through all the trouble they might as well swim to Massachusetts so that their grand kids would all be rich New Englanders in stead of poor New Yorkers, and who wanted to live in a city where the Mayor was a bad tempered Dutch guy with a wooden leg who called the place New Amsterdam anyway, so I am getting off the point, it was time for dinner.
So there were Indians there also, John Smith and his wife Pocahontas, because she was tired of her dad chasing her husband John around with an axe every time he made the same old joke "Hey, did the White guys pay the rent yet?".
Christopher Columbus got the place of honor at the head of the table. He was very old at this point, and probably dead, but was such a figure of respect that no one told him, but rather made sure the head of the table was down wind from everyone and they didn't ask Chris to carve the turkey or they'd all starve. The Turkeys were much larger then, as it was a long time ago and they were still evolving from their Dinosaur ancestors, so one or two fed all of New England, and there was still some left to make clothes out of. So, now you know why we pardon a Turkey at the white house every year, then chop its head off and eat it. Happy Thanks Giving to all and to all a good night, after a little Alka-Seltzer
Cheers Lorcan

Raptors Need YOUR help - RIGHT NOW!!!

2007-11-21T07:00:00.001-08:00

New York, Tompkins Square Park: 11\14\07 For the second year, a juvenile Red Tailed Hawk has visited Tompkins Square Park, in search of rodents and the occasional pigeon. It may well be that this young visitor is just what the neighborhood is seeking, as ideas are being floated to give pigeons birth control, fine people who feed them, and place poison in the park for rodents.
In answer to a question about the effect on the hawk, of poisoning the rodents in Tompkins Square park, "It can't be good for him," says Gregory Gough Avian Ecologist, Migratory Bird Center of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. "You might try letting the hawk do the job himself, he can eat quite a lot of rodents." He suggests the Board of Health curtail the poison program in Tompkins Park from November until mid December when we will find out if this young hawk decides to become a permanent resident of the East Village. He explains that the older birds find permanent territory, and the younger ones are migratory as they seek a place to settle.

After speaking with Gregory Gough, I discovered that difethialone was the poison used in Tompkins Square Park. Difethialone. According to "Toxicology" by G. D. Osweiler, published by Williams and Wilkins, Media, Pennsylvania.(1996)it is a second generation anticoagulant poison. It interferes with vitamin K, a clotting factor. It kills the targeted organism by effecting massive internal hemorrhaging. What defines the second generation of these poisons, is the ability to kill after a single ingestion of the poison.
In the first week of November, packets of Difethialone were placed in the burrows of the rodents in the park. A week later a young hawk was seen feeding on mice about 10 feet from the sign warning of the poisoning. In a toxicology report on the death of a young female Red Tailed Hawk, Ward B. Stone, a wildlife pathologist with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, writes "We have found the anticoagulant rodenticides to be important secondary poison of raptors."
Second generation anticoagulant rodenticides have been banned in other places due to their deadly effect on raptors. The San Francisco Commission for the Environment banned these poisons after the death of a Red Shouldered Hawk in Golden Gate Park. The harm this class of poison can cause is impressive. Mountain lions and endangered San Joaquin Kit Foxes have died as a result of ingesting prey which fed on second generation anticoagulant poisons.
Michael Fry, of the American Bird Conservancy feels that there is no safe season for use of second generation anticoagulant rodenticides. Most hawks migrate to South America during the winter, but some do stay in warmer climates. He suggests a return to the less toxic first generation rodenticides: Chdrophacinome, Diphacinone and Warfarin. Fry explains that a rodent who eats either the first or second generation anticoagulants will take from four to seven days to die. During that time the animal might be eaten by a predator, such as a raptor. In the case of a second generation anticoagulant, where a single ingestion can cause death the rodent may have eaten the poison several times over those days, building up a super lethal dose. In the same period of time, ingesting doses of the first generation anticoagulants, the animal would have a less dangerous dose in its body at the time of ingestion by a predator.
"The EPA has put forward a mitigation plan, to take all the second generation anticoagulants off the consumer market, allowing only first generation anticoagulants to be sold over the counter. Only licensed pest control experts will be allowed to use the second generation poisons in tamper resistant baiting stations. We want the use of these second generation anticoagulants to be restricted to indoor use alone," says Michael Fry.

A tale of two vets

2007-11-13T17:59:00.000-08:00

Mike Amico
Mike Amico spends a lot of time sitting in front of the building in which he lives, on Saint Marks place feeding pidgins, complementing pretty women, missing his beautiful wife, and telling younger folks what things were like when...
Mike deserves some time to relax and enjoy life. On June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion, a tough kid from a tougher neighborhood ran through the surf into a confusion of unimaginable noise, fear and death. Mike's eyes gaze off somewhere else when he remembers that day. He does not say much, other than, "that was some day..." and he remembers how many of the others died. They were young men with whom he trained, with whom he became friends, on whom he depended and who depended on him. He does not talk much about the worst of the war. He was there, saw it, lived it, but prefers to remember his friends and family, his young wife, who is always young and pretty in his memories.
Mike grew up in the neighborhood in which he still lives, it was called the Lower East Side then. Italian kids like Mike often joined gangs, had heroes who were "good fellows" or were "made men." He talks about mob hits on first avenue, long ago, ethnic battles and fights over turf. As a young man, he also saw his ancestral home, Italy. He walked across Italy with his unit, driving the armies of fascism out. He remembers the girls, the wine, the beautiful land, and he remembers the terrible fighting and loss. Mike, however, is not one of those vets who dwells on the worst of war, he remembers trying to grab hold of a little life in the face of all that death. He greets passing tourists in their own language, Germans, Italians, French, to him the divisions of war are in the past. He laughs and says to them that he learned their language when he was there ... during the war.
Mike often thinks of his brother in law, who he remembers was like his own brother to him. It worried him when his sister's husband was posted to Mike's battalion. "I felt like I should look out for him..." Mike remembers. He also remembers hearing the explosion that killed him. "I felt terrible, but the strange thing is I couldn't cry."
Mike came home and his wife had four children. One son, Michael died as a baby. His two daughters, Maria and Jackie married well. His surviving son Louie incurred his anger when he volunteered to go to Vietnam straight from high school. He wanted his son to go to college, and he tried to dissuade him by telling him about the terrible things he saw when he went to war. But, it was too late. His son went to Vietnam, and returned, suffering the effects of Agent Orange, a defoliant used to clear jungles, which was found to produce a host of serious health issues years after exposure. Mike is no longer angry, only worried for his son.
Mike is now retired from his job, driving a truck for a restaurant supply company. In his early 80s, that war, that time which seems so long ago, so unique in its brutality and evil, still lives in Mike's eyes as he feeds his pidgins on his Saint Marks Place stoop.
James McCowan lives in the neighborhood as well. He was born and grew up in New York City. He lives in the East Village and takes his dog to the Tompkins Square Park dog run. I met him there on Veteran's Day, near to that 11th hour, of the 11th day of the 11th month. He has no fond memories of Vietnam where he fought when he, like Mike Amico, was a young man. He has no stories to share, other than with other vets. He has nothing to say to anyone was has was not there, or has not been to war. He remembers how no one knew what to say, what to do, when he returned.
He is happy that folks seem to be treating the new returning vets better, but he adds, "I feel for the kids today, their sacrifice, and I honor it."
His silence speaks as much as Mike's memories. His is a silent generation of former warriors.

James McCowan

The Risk to Make Art

2007-11-13T04:26:00.000-08:00

Well, two dear friends made me REALLY ... oh, not even angry ... just couldn't deal with them the other day (hello if your out there reading this... ). They got me through a very difficult time, which I needed in order to be where I am today, wherever that is?
Well, where am I? I've worked since I was a kid in a family business, while working at things I hoped would be meaningful, from law to music and photography - boat building, oh a few other things. Some work is simply work ... work in the family business. Some work is calling - art. Law can be art, when it is a calling to transcendent meanings - work in civil rights. Photography ... there is work, sitting behind a counter making passport photos - transcendent photography - making much less money to make photos which mean more than the little bit of news you are paid a small amount for reporting.
To make art you have to jump off the roof, stand in the middle of a highway, (for you kids out there who take things literally, no you don't ... this is metaphor). I had lunch with a dear, dear friend yesterday. This friend once inadvertently tossed a hand grenade into my life, for which I am in her debt. It hurt us both rather deeply, but it turned me around to return to photography, an art which once got burned out of my life. It gave me the courage to jump off the roof each time I raise a camera, and try to tell the real story there in the face of people often not happy to see a camera.
In the awful shock of the explosion and pain in the aftermath my greatest fear was that the friendship and love would be blown away. I don't think it was, the intensity was burned up, that was the blast powder in the grenade, but the love and friendship remains. That friend sometimes feels alone at the bottom of a well... Friend, I hope thee knows thee is not, I am one of those who will always go looking for a ladder for thee.
I've said here before, that there is no greater sin in the eyes of others than failure. Yet, to art is a make or break process. If the only sane path is to work at the riskless drone, then we will live in a world without art. There is the usual chicken and egg question, did art happen because the artist was the kicked to the curb outsider, the one who got handed the hand grenade, or was the artist kicked to the curb and handed a grenade because artists must be an outsider ... who knows? Why care?
This has been a month of being kicked in the teeth. One of these days soon, I will explain. At times like this, I need to vent, but I also need friends not to tell me walk away from my art, which though it does not pay well, takes work, as well as blood and pain. So I am not angry at the two of you, I just can't sit around being scolded ... just now. You can do so after the gallery opens... =)
My other friend ... thanks for lunch ... and thanks for the hand grenade, I owe thee a ladder.

Opening postoned - Squater in Gallery

2007-11-05T06:57:00.001-08:00

New York lost a friend

2007-10-24T05:29:00.001-07:00

James J. Savastano died suddenly of a heart attack on October 9, 2007. I remember him, on a day I covered a small fire on Grand Street a few months ago. On the way home I thought, what a real gentleman that chief was... Having a press photographer hovering about, gathering the images which tell the story is not a big priority for those who must protect the community by stopping fire from growing from a small incident into a major disaster. He tolerated my being where I had to be -- albeit I am always careful to stay out of the way of the work ... he answered those questions he could and in short, was a gentleman.
His distinguished career with the Fire Department of the City of New York spanned 29 years. At the time of his death, he was a Battalion Chief / 4th Battalion Commander. He leaves behind a wife Lorraine and children Janine, Karen, James & Laura, and sisters Regina Keenan, Patricia Tschacher, Kathleen Woodworth, and brothers Edward, Roy and Richard. He will be missed by many colleagues, friends and the people of Downtown New York, who he protected until his unexpected loss.
Most of all, we will all be thankful that this gentleman risked everything for us, every day of his working life.

The Light Within (Without)

2007-10-21T18:29:00.001-07:00

Two Pieces of Candy - Muslims and Jews Eid ul Fitr and Simchat Torah

2007-10-14T04:35:00.000-07:00

Simchat Torah ends the cycle of reading the Torah and celebrates the beginning of the cycle anew. It is a joyous holiday. The Eid ul Fitr ends the month of fasting at Ramadan, celebrating the Quran being sent from heaven. It is a joyous holiday.
A Chassid friend called me and said, "Don't bring your cameras, but come to the synagogue in Williamsburg to see how we celebrate Simchat Torah." I did go to the synagogue. I must ask Jacob to which branch of the Chassidim this synagogue belongs. I asked one of the young folks there, and he told be they were Veen. During the dancing and singing, as the Chassidim danced the Torahs around the synagogue, children handed out candy to each other, and to me.
Yesterday, I went to photograph the Eid ul Fitr in the park behind the Madina Masjid Mosque on First Ave. and 11th Street.

Hundreds of fathers, sons and grandfathers gathered together, barefoot on prayer rugs, or long sheets of brown paper to give thanks at the feast which ends Ramadan, the most important time in the Muslim year. Children handed out candy to each other, and to me.

Salaam - Shalom my friends

What Value Does a Soldier Have When He No Longer Can Kill?

2007-09-23T16:59:00.001-07:00

In the guidebooks to the East Village of New York, there are photographs of the mosaic lampposts, the mosaic bus bench made from a broken planter, mosaic restaurant walls.

They are made by Jim Power. Jim was born in Ireland, in Waterford. He gained his citizenship when, in his late teens, he joined the US army and manned a waist gun on a helicopter in Vietnam.
"They didn't know I was half blind. I don't think I ever shot anyone, I just couldn't see anyone out there... " Jim served in Vietnam, and came home... more or less. He lived on the margins, never far from the war which took his youth and took much of the rest of his life. For twenty years now, he has festooned the East Village with joyous art. "Very TIP TOP of the Morning!" he yells to folks on their way to the never ending grind of making a living in New York as he pastes broken glass and pottery to the gray lampposts.

He once had an apartment, then a squat, then a tent as it became harder and harder to live on the margins of New York's former Lower East Side. Jim was one of the artists who made this neighborhood the East Village, a name first used by Tony's Diner, the Village East on the corner of Saint Marks and Third Avenue.

Now Jim is angry. His art has benefited the city in a way that cannot be measured. The property values reflect the artistic feel of the neighborhood, of which his mosaics are a very prominent part. Now, he does not even have a tent in which to sleep. So, he has grown angry at the being he loves more than anything on earth, his dog Jessie Jane. He feels the neighborhood cares more for Jessie than for him. He placed a for sale sign on her, as close to an act of suicide as he, in his still sane mind can do.

He will not part with her however, it is simply a scream for recognition. It is unlikely that Jim can sell Jessie Jane, she is completely in love with Jim and will not stay with anyone else, even for short periods.
More, he has decided to remove his art from the streets with a hammer. Some looked on in curiosity or confusion as Jim railed at the lack of appreciation shown to him by the city, and threatened to run for Mayor in the next election. A passerby, Sweet Lew, a saxophone player, begged Jim to leave his work in place as chips of mosaic flew from the lamppost under his attack. Jim screamed that he was going to Philadelphia where "artists are respected."

Two fire department ambulances and two police cars arrived. Many in the crowd were worried that he might be taken into custody. However, the police and fire department EMTs calmed him down.
Jim explains that for years his work has been included in tourist guides to New York, helping bring people to New York and to the East Village. He says that he does not expect charity, but rather the city owes him a roof over his head, without having to give up his dog -- a condition of most shelters. "I should get a paid job for two years of work repairing my 80 lampposts."

Jim often does workshops for the children, either in schools or out on the street where he works on public art. He just wants to be able to keep doing this without having to live on the street for another winter.

What's wrong with this picture?

2007-09-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

Michael T in blackface during the HOWL festival

As part of the HOWL festival in Tompkins Square Park, a small troop of performers sought to present a little bit of infamous Bowery history. In the face of the juggernaut of featureless modern high-rises which have been destroying the quaint and gentle architecture of the Bowery, they sought to remind us of the stories being torn down and plowed under. They concentrated on one building which survived assaults of social reformers in its day, and stood for years in an often marginalized and neglected part of town. When the wrecker's ball struck McGurk's, the ghosts of many of our most colorfully lost New Yorkers were made homeless.
This show intended to honor their memories, but one act at least, brought other more modern specters forward for some spectators.

Luc Sante describes in the book, "Low Life" how McGurk's Suicide Hall was one of the most notorious houses of prostitution in New York in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It received its name from the number of suicides by young girls who worked the place. Often their method of self murder was to drink carbolic acid. If done properly, it is a horrifically painful but certain death. Blonde Mage Davenport was one of the girls who successfully killed herself in this manner. She and her partner Big Mame, undertook to kill themselves together. Big Mame spilled most of the acid on her face, disfiguring her self and resulting in her being barred from McGurk's. McGurk's closed over 90 years ago.

The girls of McGurk's drink carbolic acid at the HOWL festival

Among the crowd who patronized McGurk's, and the other Bowery dives, one could find singers and comedians who roamed from saloon to saloon, playing music, dancing and singing for coins from the crowd. One such busker was Al Jolson. His act, in cork makeup, known as blackface, and familiar to most Americans from his acting in the early days of film with sound, was perfected on the Bowery in the last days of McGurk's.
Remembering the place of blackface in the Bowery's past, some present in the park during the festival were shocked to see Michael T, a White performer, lip sync to an Al Jolsen recording of "Mammy," flanked by two Black performers, also in blackface.

James Romberger, an artist and the husband of the festival's director describes the intent of the act as following: "The minstrel show was for years the only public persona of people of color. To reproduce an entertainment of that time without showing the racist aspects would have been a lie, like the racist America missing from such sanitized corporate entertainment as Martin Scorcese's 'Gangs of New York.'"

The intent of the performance was lost on some people. More, the reaction of the majority White middle class audience disturbed them, as did the MC's patter which praised Jolson in the present, breaking the illusion that this was a view of the past. As Scott Crary, the director of the film "Kill Your Idols" put it, referring to the performance and the audience reaction, "Al Jolson began his career on the Bowery. And I think they were beckoning a bit of post-modern awareness to mock that history. Still, the satisfied laughter and cheers from the crowd were uncomfortable to listen to. I can't admit to being entirely in on the joke."

Other's put it more simply. One reaction was described by Crary, " I saw Carl's friend, the black gentleman you photographed (under the title "evening light") in the crowd watching the girls that were on before Michael T. When the minstrels came out, he turned and pronounced it "bullshit" and walked away grumbling, clearly insulted." A similar reaction was that of James Bedford, a middle aged Black man, born in Georgia, who moved to New York after a time in Philadelphia. He has lived in New York since 1988 and is a building superintendent on Saint Marks Place. He had been talking to a friend in the crowd just before Michael T appeared on stage. I noticed he had left as soon as the performance began. I found him speaking to friends a few days afterwards and asked him about the performance.

"I didn't like it. They never miss a chance to make Black folks look bad. I looked at the crowd looking at it [Michael T's performance], they were laughing. I just walked off. There are just some racist-assed people. New York has gotten more racist than Georgia. Georgia has changed."
One of the friends he is speaking to is John Newsome, who moved to New York from Texas forty-two years ago. He speaks of his experience as a Black American and a Black New Yorker. In answer to a question, if a Gay activist in blackface is somehow expositive of some civil rights notion, some irony he replies that like all civil rights struggles, the Gay rights struggle has benefited from Black leadership on rights, and not returned the debt owed... "Blacks have been at the forefront of everybody else's' civil rights struggle and we're blamed for it, we don't benefit. The Gay struggle and the Black struggle are entirely different, unless you a Black and Gay. If I go into a place of business, I am a suspect, until they see my money and are sure I am going to spend it."

A White baby doll painted in blackface is presented, as Michael shouts, "Mah Baby! Mah baby!" A hooting laugh went up from the audience. For me, it was not a laugh at the racism of the times past ... it was a laugh with the racism of the times present. It was the release of the subconscious racism which accepts the different outcome of American promise in the segregation of our schools, the jailing of so many more of the targeted group by unspoken belief in difference of potential. For me, the idea of the baby in blackface was the infliction of racism on so much of White America at birth, and I could not join in the laughter.I just photographed the event. James Romberger responds, "As you say, you were unable to cheer for this part of the show; I consider that a valid response. Perhaps those cheering hailed the courage and skill of the notably multicultural performers rather than the image they projected; perhaps those not cheering were saddened and disgusted at facing America's racist past. Both responses are valid responses."

I remain unconvinced. While our schools in New York are still so separate and unequal, and Black New Yorkers remain permanent suspects, should we be laughing?

Remembering Firefighter Gerarde Baptiste

2007-09-11T17:54:00.000-07:00

Box of dog biscuits at the door of Engine 33 Ladder 9's firehouse
Firefighter Gerarde Baptiste used to carry dog biscuits in his pockets for every dog he'd meet. He was lost on 9\11

Carl - A scow sailor adrift inTomkins Square Park

2007-08-31T21:06:00.000-07:00

Carl

Tompkins Square Park: Lower East Side, New York. Today, as often happens, Lt. Corcoran told a drinker to get out of the park. And, Carl, ever the gentleman, complied with humor and a genteel wit.

Carl is given a ticket and told to leave the park

A friend of Carl watches the exchange, knowing the outcome

Who is Carl? Carl was born in a different world, the New York of 1946 - the last days of the waterfront of Anna Christie, the world of bargies and a community who lived in sight of the city but a world away.As Carl tells it, his mother had a hard menopause, and in order to survive, his father retreated to a job on a Trap Rock Scow, a barge towed from up the Hudson River to an anchorage off Staten Island. Carl was then the sole recipient of his mother's temper, so in an act of kindness his father took him, just before puberty, to live in the aft cabin of a scow, a community of a few thousand deck hands living in a floating village anchored off the narrows. One can still see barges moored at Robin's reef, in the lee of Kitty's light, just before the ferryboat reaches Staten Island.

"My father took some two by fours and made a bunk for me, above his. I had a porthole, it was a beautiful view. I became quite a seaman, I might not have been able to splice a hawser, but I was a good sailor." He and his father, worked as did as the other deck hands of the scows, breaking ice off the lines and bending stiff lines, salting the decks, and sweating in the summers. "I lived the life before the mast, so to speak... we had no mast."

He suffered through puberty, gazing at the city from the island of scows which bumped against each other at the anchorage, separated by truck tire fenders. On occasion he and his father went ashore in a rubber dingy. In the winter they had a Franklin coal stove, but often it gave too much heat, so they cooked over two hand pumped gas primus stoves. "The company even gave us an ice box, but it was no good to us, they did not give us ice!" Rain, fog, sleet and storm, fair weather or foul, they worked the scow, living on the end of a tug boat's tow line, or anchored in the upper river or lower harbor around the stake boat, permanently chained to the anchorage -- the center of the scow sailor's community.

An 1890s tug - a ghost of Carl's childhood.

Then one day, that world died. The tug boat companies tore the cabins off the scows and had their own crews take over.

Up the river for ever

The new world slips down river.

A world ended, and tug boat men had to board scows in rough weather, sometimes paying for the new deal with their lives. And so, the 1950s turned into the 1960s, and there was no place for the scow sailors of New York.

Officer Torres tries to keep supress a smile around Carl

The officer gives in to Carl's humor

Tonight, this gentleman, who still dreams of life with his father in the cozy cabin of the Trap Rock Scow, sat in the park confronted by the police car. Lt. Corcran commented on his long hair. "Yes, you are right, I do need a hair cut. Thank you for the concern... I will get a hair cut... Yes, I will not lie to you, I AM drunk. I hope you only give me a ticket, as I don't have my ID with me today. I have to leave the park as well? Well, I suppose I do if I need to get a hair cut... So, I will leave ... and rape a barber." This brought laughter to the two officers out side the car, I could not see Lt. Corcoran response ... and Carl rose and walked slowly out of the park. Few in our neighborhood know where his journey started.

And Carl leaves the park again

Update on Flight Insurence

2007-08-20T05:46:00.001-07:00

Ryan and Molly's wedding was great!

... and I made it back alive.

Flight insurance

2007-08-16T19:58:00.000-07:00

I am away on a plane in a few hours. A street "prophet" told me last month that I was going to die in a car crash, burn up, and go to hell. So ... well, I always felt publishing these things is a funny sort of insurance. But, just think of the urban legion if anything happens. And one, dear friend ... know that between St. Anthony and this public sort of flight insurance ... all will be well, for thee as well as for me. Glue =)

Karl Marx, Carl the Communist, Quakers, Convergence, Class and Care - (looking for the great leap forward)

2007-08-11T03:13:00.000-07:00

Oh, where to begin ... maybe on a bench, next an old friend, Carl - a Trotskyist by his self description. It rained terribly this morning, and there were tornadoes in New York City, Brooklyn to be exact. We are breathing a hot wet soup which passes for air today.

Carl

"Well, come the emergence of the Socialist State here," says Carl. "We face the great dilemma of how to deal with the Amish and you Quakers. I suppose we need to offer some plan to encourage some kind of gentle assimilation into the twenty-first century? " Well, I complement him on the depth of his religious faith, wonder at how anyone might claim ownership of a century, and begin again, to try and find words to describe the folly of the single system, conservative message, the next big thing, the great awakening, the catholic church (small c ), orthodoxy, the all powerful, lock step, great and powerful Oz, while we both sit waiting for the great leap forward. And, who wants to be dealt with anyway?
When did it all begin? When we picked up rocks to smash bones of discarded lion kill, in our scavenger - pre flint knapping days, did some early hominid with ADHD find a better way to splinter bone, and some Alpha male make a law that it must be done this way, or suffer a crack on the head? Perhaps.

But, for as long as we have stories, we have been looking for that single answer, and each young zealous generation believes they have it in the new and improved and ever so simple single edged theory of...

And as the old folks said to Bernadette Devlin, before she was McAlisky, as she tells it... "Keep marching for your rights and there will be war." "Oh no old woman, oh no old man, it is a new time, a new world and we just have to show the error of their ways to those who oppress us and... " and soon it was war. Each generation believes in the new answer, even if the new answer is to embrace (converge on) an old system.

I'm glad to see, Liz Opp and Robin both speak of convergence in terms of fuzzy. Good start. But why speak of convergence at all? Was it Emerson who said, "The louder we say us, the louder we say them?" And yet, it is true, we need to draw some boundaries on any abstraction, and this abstraction of Quakerism is like oil on the water sometimes, or is it?

It seems less difficult to draw boundaries on something called a Society of Friends, than something called Quakers. As a society of friends, we seek unity, even definition in unity. Unity is a remarkable thing ... it presumes best intentions. I am sometimes disappointed that some Friends who are rather zealous about defining the boundaries of the abstraction of Quakerism, at times so strongly that they must say it twice, are not overly interested in granting others their best intentions. Friends who neglect to assume the best intentions of others, fortress their cliques, show little faith in those practices which bring us together as a diverse group, processes of clearness, of openness at business meetings ... respect for each other, and at the root is the notion that for me to be right, thee must be wrong ... the single answer to the world's many problems ... my way or the highway.

A few of us, in my Meeting, speak of how to get our meeting to go from a reactive state, where we can't even accomplish the simplest tasks together, to a proactive state where we pull together as a team, a society of friends. In an urban Meeting, in one of the most diverse cities on earth, we are faced with having to find that model of unity in the face of Babel. One friend suggests that the answer is found in acceptance that Jesus is God. My response that I will acknowledge Jesus as God, when the Friend acknowledges God is Jewish, a sort of Zen-light response is less than helpful (thee is welcome to turn the pun Zen-light anyway thee may - I do).

Part of the answer is a trusting silence, but what happens when we must speak as we seek? The question of who owns the 21st century is very like who owns our identity as Quakers. I believe we all own both, it takes nothing from me, to give thy place to thee. The more we empty the cup of our ego and invite God to fill it, the more we are the children of light. Some Friends will say to me, and have, but if we worship different Gods, what then? I suppose my response is to say, my God and thy God are God, thy name for God, and my name for God is ego, and a God who can't laugh at our attempts to sculpt the eternal and infinite into the image of our own ego, well ... just should not have invented irony.

Now, some Friends have, as we have in the past, asked that we examine class, as one of the many divides which creates diversity in our Meetings, and might well create division. Yes, there are class differences which like theology does divide us when we draw it around us as an armor -- working class and owning class alike. It becomes walls to fortress our schools, our social conscience and our testimonies from simplicity to peace. I admit a twinge of pride in great moments of class awareness, such as in the film Matwan, when the IWW organizer says, "There are two kinds of people in the world, those who work, those who don't ... we work, they don't!" But, how true is that. If we are not aware of the identity of our class and work for our class interests, who will? If we work only for the interest of our class, who are we? We can deny an ownership class their right to one thing or another, we can dig in until the great leap forward ... divide and fail ... or we can transcend, not our awareness of, but the walls of our identity. I think that is what it is to be Quaker ... to strive with the late Friend Harry Helmsley and the late Friend Barrington Dunbar to be a society of friends undivided by racialism, class, theology...

Where does this leave us -- the all inclusive us? My friend in Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland, Maz, just had her birthday a few days ago. I should give her a call. When my wife and I would pick at each other, in the first days of our long decades together, Maz would simply say, "be good to each other." Maz, thee has summed it all up.

Be good to each other.

Neglect

2007-08-09T16:37:00.000-07:00

How long can we ignore our infrastructure while blowing up other folks ... another example of Dr. King's reflection about bombs dropped on Vietnam landing on American slums, or in this case, midtown.

pumping steam into an ancient system ... while spending billions on war.

all photos Lorcan Otway all rights reserved

Art inside and out

2007-07-20T19:24:00.000-07:00

There are two kinds of artists ... in one way to look at the world. There is the insider artist, Rembrant (when he was young) Ansel Adams, Edward Stiechen, they made pictures that the insider community understood right off and bought in their life time. Then there is the outsider artist. Diane Arbus, Vincent Van Gogh, Jackson Pollack, Phil Ochs. They told their story of the margin from the outside. They got their voice by the pain that was caused them ... from so many sources. It takes a lot to see in the special hard to see light of the margins. Sometimes you need to be really hated by family, need to be alone, and be able to love the way only the unloved can. Then, just as Rembrant knew what to sell and when, you have to know when your work is done. When you have shown enough pain, and joy and wonder, and also know that you are not meant to benefit from your work, as those who might see something in it, will not see what you saw ... this is why so many like Diana Arbus became known after their death. They did not know how to get those who did not get them in life, to get them until they knew their work was done and gave it to the folks how hated them in life.

The trick for those of us on the outside, is not in knowing what to say, but in knowing when to go.

Walking with Hillel and Yeshua on a journey to divide commentary from Torah

2007-07-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

I've not been writing much these days. More than the struggle to get the computer to work... I have been looking and listening ... and walking. An email from my dear dear fFriend Pam made me feel I have neglected fFriends in not writing for a while, and I know how I worry about some friends when they are not writing...

I've been working on my journalistic photographs, street fights, arrests, overdoses, and gentle young people living in the park. But, I am also drawn away, drawn to a peaceful place, a walk often of almost eight miles round trip, to another world, another pace at which people live and work, I am drawn to Williamsburg ... where I am finding Satmar Hassidim.

Coming to Lee Avenue is like, in many ways, spending time among the old order Amish and Plain Mennonites ... but not quite. There is a huge difference. In one of my many conversations in Williamsburg, on finding that my mother's mother was a nonobservant Jew, he asked me what my Hebrew name was.

"Oh, I haven't got one." I told him. We had been speaking about Jewish and Satmar history.

"Sure you do. You read the bible ... what is the first name that comes to mind?"

Without a moment's hesitation I said, "Hillel."

"There you are. Your Hebrew name is Hillel."

Naming is a powerful thing. Naming is claiming, and in this, without meaning to, I had claimed a little bit of my mother's tribe, and had been claimed by that tribe. But more, in that moment of asking who do I think of when I think of my relation to the Bible, I found I was claiming some of my self.

Why Hill el? Hillel said, "Do nothing to another, that which is abhorrent to thyself, that is the Torah and all the rest is commentary." All the rest is commentary is what makes the difference between sojourning among deeply observant Jews and most other people. All the rest is commentary accepts thee and me as equal in the sight of God, something other faiths sometimes do not do.

In these times of the fourth wave of Christian fundamentalism, when some in the Religious Society of Friends speak of the need to again split, I think of Hillel saying, the rest is commentary. We are living in times which can weigh heavy on the soul. The Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, my wife's church, has allowed for a prayer abandoned after Vatican II calling for the Jewish people to convert. I have heard Quaker pastors speak of Judaism as an unfinished faith. I have heard Friends question if we Quakers all can worship together if some worship a God complete without a unique relationship to Jesus Christ and some worship the "truth that Jesus is the salvation of humanity."

This is a profound difference. I have not ever heard a Satmar Hassid say that God has made heaven for the Satmars, or Jews alone. Rather, well, be righteous, love God with all your heart, be humble, and do nothing to another that is abhorrent to thee ... the commentary does not get you into heaven anymore than wearing our dark clothes and broad brimmed hats...

I think there is more than wisdom in this, there is truth. We approach that of God within us, when we are complete in acceptance of God in others. This does not mean that all religions are true. Rather, when we deny the truth in others, we loose the truth in ourselves.

Some point to miracles to prove their faith. Some say, "I know" ( on the basis of human art, books which have been copied, edited, fought over), "that Jesus literally raised the dead, and this proves he alone can show me the road to heaven."

The miracles which speak to me are gentler, and for me, at least, more easy to prove. God, one day, seemed to break the covenant, and factories of death were built in Europe in the middle of the last century. And as they did, in the face of thousands of years of being the object of genocide, Jewish people did not loose their faith. They loved God with all their hearts and hold as the central statement of their faith to do to others nothing that is abhorrent to themselves. Such is the miracle of Mary Dyer walking with confidence to her execution, or Tom Fox saying that he would not want to be rescued by violent actions.

This is not to say that any of us live our faith to perfection. Today, as I sat with my cousin and a friend of his in a cafe in Williamsburg, Jacob, a Hassid and funny force of nature of a man, sat down with us, and introduced himself by saying, "So, you have come to see the Hassids! Well, we are some of us good people, some of us crooks, some of us crazy ... just like everyone else." He proceeded to take us around, in and out of shops showing us wonderful things. He asked me if I had ever seen a Kosher hardware store. I had not, and could not imagine what he meant.

He breezed us past the cashier, "They are on a tour!" he called to the fellow ... and took us through the shop showing us candles, and other things to make a home ready for worship. This, he explained did not make the shop Kosher. He took us to the back of the store, where to my amazement, there was a bath, like some I had seen in photographs of archeological digs in the middle east. It was deep, and fed by rain water from the roof, and kept circulating like a natural stream. "When you buy dishes or eating utensils," he explained, "they are dipped into the water to wash them, to make them kosher."

As you keep the little laws, you keep the big ones. It is not my plain clothes that keep me on a path to a righteous life, it is that they remind me of where the path is found.

For me, the path to being a Quaker Quaker, as a fFriend says on his blog... is to not have to deny the completeness of the path of others. It is not to fortress ourselves in the conclusions of past Friends, but rather learn and seek new light which leads us to the true worship of God, that worship which accepts God's work and God's light in others.

In these days of new fundamentalism, I sometimes see evangelists trailing along next to Hassids, who are politely, but firmly not wishing to be evangelized to... One I heard saying, "But what if you are wrong?" I felt a deep sense of emptiness for that woman. I felt I should say to her, "Stop speaking at these people and listen awhile! They might well show thee ways THEE has been blind to God, blind to the God who speaks to us the same message in many languages ... do nothing to another ... the rest is commentary."

I have nothing to teach this child about God. I have much to learn by accepting that God speaks the complete truth to her and her people as much as he spoke to George Fox, and to me in the moments of my convincement.

Dear love to all the fFriends I have neglected in my sojourning.
lor

Sorry Friends

2007-06-27T04:54:00.000-07:00

Ever since Blogspot "upgraded" it has taken so long to load the pages to respond that I have often just given up. Today, it took me almost a half hour to go to the add comment page. So, I must apologize to Friends whose blogs I have almost stopped commenting on... I really don't know what to do about it. It just takes too long to log on to Blogspot. Further, their "help" functions are so impersonal and not at all interactive, so I have never found Blogspot's help line gave me an answer to any of the issues I have had with Blogspot.

Secrecy and Trust in God and Each Other

2007-06-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

Some Friends were puzzled by my last post about Trustees. Frankly many of us were puzzled by decisions being made in our Quarterly Meeting, which seemed to emanate from Trustees, from Property, yet no one seemed to know how these decisions were being made. We met for months to view and comment on plans for improvements on Friends Seminary, with an understanding that we would be part of a process of unity which would result in these changes. Suddenly, 13,000,000 dollars where committed to a loan and the jack hammers were interrupting Meeting for Worship, and no one knew who gave the go ahead. Trustees were blamed.

For many years now, I have noticed a difference in my Meeting, Fifteenth Street Monthly Meeting, from any other Meeting I have attended. I am beginning to find the reasons. We seem to have built, over the years, a tolerance for secrecy, that darkness which denies light to a Meeting. We cannot say we trust God if we make decisions in secret, and certainly cannot say we trust each other. We are not alone completely in this, other members of other Meetings in the Quarter, which deal with Friend's Seminary, have become inured to this practice of secrecy. But the anger which flows from the results of this practice seem rooted in our Meeting, as we see the effects on the spiritual life of our community, due to our close relationship with the school and school property -- the source of this relationship of secrecy. The most damaging and blatant expression of this lack of simple light, I was shocked to find, in the By-laws of the School Committee of Friend's Seminary. The By-laws contain a direction that members of the committee: support all committee decisions to the public, and prohibit members of the committee from speaking about what is said in committee. In the simplest terms, this By-law is a constraint on the Quaker members of this committee from following that voice of God in us all, which is meant to guide and direct us as individuals, and guide our Meeting towards unity. In the complexity of human politics, this is a source of anger and disempowerment among Friends in this Quarterly Meeting. It makes the public face of our faith, an untruth.

Recently, there was an outpouring of anger at the Quarterly Meeting held in the fall at Morningside Meeting. The start of the slide towards anger came from the question, how it came to be, that while we still were in the process of reviewing plans for changes in the physical structure of the school building, changes began to be made without a final agreement. Many presumed it was Trustees behind the decision to go ahead, and part of the anger stemmed from no one stepping up to the plate and taking responsibility for the decision.

Recent events have led me, and a few other Friends to realize that it was not likely the Trustees who acted out of process, but rather it was the School Committee. In the past several months, I have been confronted by members of the School Committee explaining that the work of their committee was not to be discussed outside the committee. I have checked, and the By-laws do in fact state this. This was not restricted to confidential matters, such as employment issues (not all of which should be confidential by the way) but every action of the committee, even the most mundane business. The most recent action, taken in secret by the School Committee, has been to rename the school building. In so doing, the School Committee is making a statement to the community at large, which will be taken to be a statement by the owners of the property, The New York Quarterly Meeting. It is a statement with which I find that I and a number of others are not in unity.

I was told, by way of explanation that the boards of corporations always make decisions in secret. That is simply not true. Quaker boards do not. Quaker boards must not, as it is a rejection of our faith and in the end it creates the kind of anger which we see tearing apart our Meeting today and we must put an end to it at once. I propose that we put an end to the practice of secrecy by a change in the Quarterly Meeting Handbook, this Seventh Month. It is my firm conviction that we must clearly define the difference between keeping confidences and secrecy. Confidences flow from our Pastoral Care responsibilities towards each other, not confined to the Pastoral Care committee, but those times which we minister to each other. Other than that, Quakers are bound by our faith to openness and simplicity.

I will write more on this later, many Friends feel a great sorrow, a betrayal of trust by the school committee, a sense that we have been stepped over, and voices not heard. It is a day from which it will take a long time to move forward.
Secrecy is like pulling down the blinds, so that no light can seep through.

Have We Friends Invented a Clergy in Trustees?

2007-05-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

Our Religious Society of Friends is not a religion of practicalities. Ours is a religion of ideals over exigencies. It is a sink or swim experiment in love of God in each other which gave us the strength of will to oppose all aspects of slavery, to feed Germans after the great war, and barter with Hitler for Jewish lives during the dark days of nazism. It gave us the will and want to be tortured in jails rather than fight, and to send medical help to North Vietnam.

There is always a great danger in a small group "doing" for the many. It breeds dependence, not the independence which drove a capable and courage group of spiritual pioneers. It also breeds contempt of those led by the leaders. We have inherited a great tradition. It is for each of us, working together in love and faith to keep that tradition alive. If we have to do it through artificial means, the great experiment of our faith is lost and we should lay down this society. I am not about to do that yet.

However, there is a serious breach of faith and fortitude in our maintenance of Trustees as an institution which can make decisions without the direction of the Meeting. This is the only body in our Meeting with no oversight from the Meeting, and no answerability. Nominations are made at the same corporation meeting with a single reading and no prior publication so no objections can be made, unless there is some leaking of information to some in the Meeting.

My objection to the power of Trustees to act and decide does not come from a lack of trust any other Friend. The truth is that even the best of us, when given the power to act without the unity of the Meeting behind us, will, in what we perceive to be interest of the Meeting. This is a power given to Trustees, not by the Meeting, but by the State, a power whose truth we have never accepted in our history as being authority over that of God.

Trustees should have no power to make any discussion of any matter within the society of Friends without the oversight of the Meeting and without the clearly expressed unity of the Meeting. English Meetings have survived for three hundred and fifty years without the institution of Trustees. Though the state dictates that we must have trustees, to be a truly Quaker body, they must have no power not directed by the corporate body gathered in worship.

We are told by some Trustees, again and again, that they are made responsible by the state and therefore must act to preserve their own legal liability. This argument does not move me. We cannot force trustees to act, as they are part of the process of coming to unity. Most liability flows when they act, not when they do not.

If in fact, in order to maintain property, we need Trustees, then Quakerism does not work, and we should hire clergy and declare that we have become Protestant. I am not a Protestant. I am a Quaker, raised up in a Utopian faith, believing in the power of God and God's love to guide us in all our Meetings labor, large decisions as well as small.

Friends have risked life and liberty for our faith, we should be ready to risk property as well.

Just Say No to Jean Ritchie Road!

2007-05-10T02:24:00.000-07:00

Well, not this road, here and now. Appalachia is a place of great riches and great poverty. Most of the riches the coal industry has systematically stolen from those who live in that region with the help of gun thugs and politicians for generations. It was getting better. President Clinton was treating the coal industry as it should be treated, with criminal prosecutions for poisoning our rivers and our bodies with mercury in every state needlessly for years. Coal invested one hundred million dollars in the election of a politician who would make their crimes legal, and their investment paid off, George Walker Bush's "justice" department dropped the prosecution of coal burning power plants, and made the dumping of mining waste into the nations water systems and the pumping of mercury into our bodies, legal. Now, many of you might wonder how the executive branch of government can change laws, after all, aren't they presently of the party that rails against judge made laws? Well, the judge who ruled that the coal companies were breaking the clean water act by dumping mountain tops, and tons of precious lumber, and arsenic and other heavy metal pollutants into the streams in the valleys of Appalachia asked the same question. So far the only answer has been the coughing of the children of Appalachia choking on the particulate matter from the blasting of their mountains by now federally protected criminals.

Jean Ritchie Road. Every week the equivalent force to the bombing of Hiroshima is used in Appalachia by the coal industry to blast the tops off mountains and send the results, minus the coal into the valleys, destroying one of the most precious resources in this nation for one of the most destructive and wasteful sources of power we can use. As coal is mined the water in the streams of Appalachia turns as bright orange as the T-shirts of the Appalachian people who came to bring this concern to the people of New York, at an event this week. One young mother joined the fight when she saw her daughter standing among dead fish in the stream that runs behind her house. Our dear treasure, Jean Ritchie tells us that her property is threatened, as fill is used to build an access road, to continue the destruction of her community. There was a great deal of outrage, expressed on her behalf to the Governor of her state, and so, he is responding to the anger. He has named that road, "Jean Ritchie Road." Jean, have you a middle name, we might call you? Or better still, can we demand that this road be stopped and some already existing road, which brings music lovers to say, Asheville, be called after you instead?

Why should we care, from Seattle to New York? For thirty years the levels of mercury in our environment has been dropping. Since Mr. Bush has taken his blood money from King Coal, the mercury levels in the environment have risen six percent. Mercury, one of the most deadly poisons in our ecosystem, is released when coal is burned, as well as when it is mined. And so, the coal industry is not only poisoning fish in Appalachia, but they are poisoning fish in New York State, and in the blood of every American. The levels of mercury in the blood of many American woman is enough now to cause cognitive damage to their offspring. King Coal is not only killing the mountains of Appalachia, but destroying the future potential of our nation as well.

Jean deserves better than this road, not only for the rich treasure of her music, but for being a part of bringing this knowledge to us, as we sleep in ignorance here in New York. Maybe it would be more appropriate to name a road going to some great seat of learning after her. For generation bigots have referred to the hill folk of Appalachia as "ignorant hillbillies." Well, I was among the ignorant here in New York, that great Rome of the modern world. I did not understand how burning coal was filling my blood with mercury. Well, the sons and daughters of Appalachian miners and hill folks came to my city and gave me quite an education. Folks like Julia Bonds, who faced threats from the coal industry to come and teach us ignorant city folk a lesson every American voter should understand care about deeply.

My thanks to all the people who came to New York from Appalachia to tell me all the above, and to Bobby Kennedy, Jr., spoke eloquently to this issue as well. For more, go here... http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/index.php and go here http://www.crmw.net/culture.php and then... do something.

All the best
lorcan

Torture in an Age of Cowardice

2007-05-07T02:12:00.000-07:00

When I was young in the age of John Kennedy, through books like Profiles in Courage, we learned that the brave did not torture. At my law school reunion, I was reminded that this wisdom has been abandoned by some empowered people in the United States.

Edwin D. Williamson, a former legal advisor to the Department of State, spoke on a panel on public policy and constitution law in response to terrorism. For him, the question was not should or should we not torture, but when and how. Another alum of my school, Barry Sabin, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department in Washington, DC, defended the institution of the detentions at Guantanimo Bay. All the panelists, even the one who spoke against both these contentions, accepted as fact that we live in a new world where there is a special new danger called terrorism, which suddenly appeared on the world scene in September of 2001, a new horror which changes all the rules of law for civilized nations.

October 6, 1979, flight 455 from Caracas, Venezuela was bombed killing all the civilians on board, and Cuba lost its Olympic fencing team. The flight was downed by two bombs set to go off, one, then a while later the other. The plane struggled to return to its point of origin after the first bomb set the cabin on fire, the second bomb brought it down. The masterminds of the bombings, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada were not trained by Al Queda, they were trained by the CIA. Bosch did not disappear into the hills of Afghanistan, he lived openly in Florida. George Bush, the elder, granted him political asylum. Orlando Bosch ... worked for years with Frank Sturgis, making 11 private air strikes on Cuba. In September of 1968, he fired a bazooka into the hull of a Polish ship at anchor in Miami Harbor. He was sentenced to ten years for that, but was out in 1972, resuming his terror campaign. His career of bombings and killings ranks him as one of the most prolific murderers of our nations history, and yet, he lived openly and worked openly as a terrorist in the United States until his death of natural causes.

Barry Sabin's response to my question, referring to Bosch, and asking if the world has not really changed, and more, if we are not in part responsible for the world as it now is, responded that four of Bosch's associates were recently tried and found guilty in the US. Interestingly, we did not torture them or send them out of the scope of American law. Nor have we atoned to Cuba for the harm we have caused that nation by our toleration (at least, aid most likely) of decades of terrorist attacks on that neighbor. The question, has the world really changed, the question of our own support of terror went unanswered.

In order for law to be law, it must be applied to all with the same standard of fairness and reliability. Law is not law when it is applied one way to friends and another way to perceived enemies. We cannot call for torture for others and expect the world to be outraged when our citizens are tortured, and more, we cannot use terror as a tool and stand in such outrage when it is used against us, that we abandon rule of law in our own nation.

It takes courage to atone for our actions, and it takes courage to live free. Torture is an act of cowardice.

The Common Sense of Pluralism

2007-05-01T01:25:00.001-07:00

I am a pluralist rather than a universalist. I don't think everyone is a little right, but rather, we all have to work together, and accept that we all believe ourselves to be as right as the next person, who considers us completely wrong. Ever since humanity began to consider complex problems, it appears, there have been folks seeking a single answer, a single system, and causing a lot of people headaches in the process. When we lived in a world where there were lots of resources, we could just pick up and go to the next valley and find just as good Mastodons, or Oxen, or Caribou to eat when the advocates of a single system which offended us became too aggressive. The choices have become fewer and fewer as our resources dwindled. But, as the resources dwindle, some folks still believe that they have just not described their single system philosophy of faith or government well enough, the other guys don't have the faith or intellect to "get it," or God has chosen an elect to understand what ever it is we need to understand in order to be saved. My goodness, how long can folks walk blindly over a cliff before they see the folly of their ways?
In the Society of Friends, there are a number of people who ignore that our greatest strength is the number of Friends who have come to a certain kind of pluralism, through our processes. So, along come some Friends who advocate single system belief systems and propose, for example, non-Christian Friends should be denied a say in our business meetings, as God is not speaking to them. Well, what can I say? Some expressions of Christianity and some expressions of the Muslim faith will keep attempting to convert or kill each other, as all the rest of humanities hopes go the way of the Mastodon. It seems a lot more like Quakerism to me, to all work together to preserve those gifts God gave us, in spite of the pictures we paint of God in our minds. For someone to self proclaim themselves a peace activist, a peace maker, or a Quaker while advocating the silencing of Friends in their own society, let alone the world in general, just does not make any common sense to me. It simply does not look like love to me.
One of the many fears the bible speaks of as a barrier to love, it seems to me, is a fear of someone expressing another point of view, and that fear is named orthodoxy. Like silence, we have seen over the years, that orthodoxy not only kills, it commits self slaughter. More, it is making the planet unfit for human life. While we wont talk to those who worship differently, the world is becoming a hostile environment for human life.

A Modest Proposal

2007-04-11T09:43:00.001-07:00

A number of folks have made reference to how much the events in Iraq these days remind one of the events in Vietnam when I was a youth. Well, I have been thinking, as I contemplate all those former Vietcong spending good money on Coke and Big Macs... Remember the South Vietnamese army? We just could not train them to fight. They were just plain incompetent, ... unmotivated! Same with the Iraqi army which we back ... just plain not good soldiers. We keep trying, and telling the American people, they will be able to fight on their own any day now... Now the VC, there was an army! They could tunnel, lie for hours camouflaged in the road ... if we had trained the VC to be our allies, well, everyone could have knocked off for Big Macs and a Coke years and years before we did! So, in that light, a modest proposal. Why don't we hire the other guys in Iraq to be the Iraqi army, pass out the Big Macs and Coke, and start building a safer world for Starbucks?

Yes Santa, there is a Bethany Rose

2007-04-03T06:11:00.000-07:00

Well, ... it has been awhile... I've been rather ill. But, yesterday had the great pleasure to show the meetinghouse to a passing group of young Friends from Alexandria Indiana. Must try and put the house back together, as the band is coming over for a rehearsal ... and this...

Yes Santa Claus, there is a Virginia

Or should I say, a Bethany Rose Gareis. On March 22, a birthday cake arrived at the Friends (Quaker) shelter which read, "Bethany's Birthday Wish for You." Bethany lives in North Carolina, and has just turned nine.

Her family, like many in America, struggles against sometimes overwhelming financial hardship. Her father was outsourced years ago, and has been working night and day, buying and selling surplus items to sell to keep his family of fourteen afloat. Several weeks ago, someone used a stolen credit card to purchase goods from him. That night he found a five dollar in his pocket, placed there by little Bethany, to help make up the loss.

So, it was hardly a surprise when her mother, Christi read her birthday wish. The children in the family post what they want for their birthday on the refrigerator. In these days of constant advertising to children -- you must have this or that toy... Bethany's birthday wish was simple, "All I want for my birthday is for peapil [sic] to be Happy. And I'll be Thankfull."

Christi is a blogger,(Mum2twelve see links) and people have been pledging to make Bethany's birthday wish happen, for strangers she may never meet.

The small simple wishes of children can have profound results when we take them seriously. We plant seeds. Perhaps it would be a wonderful spring growth of this little seed if we, go out and do simple, unexpected, random acts of kindness, and for Bethany the stories here, to send the lesson to our children that little wishes can come true.

SHAME!!!

2007-03-15T05:04:00.001-07:00

One of the heroes

Shame on any person who dares associate themselves with the heroic traditions of the Irish nation, who sets foot on Fifth Avenue this March 17th, before a member of the Fire Department of the City of New York takes their time honored and deed honored place at the head of that historic parade, starting with shame on the self important and self satisfied John Dunleavy.

On the job for all of us

This son of Meath, Dunleavy, put down his green beer long enough for these silly words to flow out of his gob... "I've been telling them [FDNY] for years that the parade should only be for firefighters from New York City, and when the New Orleans firefighters came up, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Shame on them if they didn't know the rules." No, shame on you, and your committee of eejits.

Answering the call

When anyone has the unmitigated gall to place their feet in the rightful place of those real heroes, consider this, that when the fool killer swings his fiery club at the head of, even Dunleavy, it will be any fire fighter of New York who will stay his hand, even at risk, even at the cost of his or her own life. Think of that, next time you have the perfidy to smirk at a TV camera and say you are trying to get the attention of the FDNY, Dunleavy. If you wish to get the attention of a firefighter, simply set yourself on fire, they will be there for you.

Listening, and helping

I used to be proud to march in the Saint Patrick's Day parade. Now, I don't even watch it on TV. My pride began to diminish when the amadaini who run the show, and just a show it has become, recognized the thousands who called for justice for Joseph Patrick Doherty, and named him the honorary grand Marshall of the parade, as he was confined in a New York federal prison - only to have their goon squad knock his sister to the ground and wrestle a small photo of her brother away from her, which she carried in his honor in the parade which was to honor him that year.
My pride soon withered completely away when, this once Irish nationalist event was declared a religious procession, against the history of its formation, in order to deny a place in the parade to the Irish Gay and Lesbian Organization, many of whom had done more for the cause of a free and fair Ireland than was ever dreamed of in the hearts of the Seaneen mutual self appreciation squad which has taken this parade away from Irish America and turned it into little more than a Klan march, rather than a coming together of the Clans.

On the streets or on the water

But, now MY final straw, is that, for Firefighters, being firefighters, this arrogant committee of little men, is punishing the FDNY, by putting them thirty-five minutes back in the parade. What did they do? They had Firefighters from New Orleans join them last year at the head of the parade. Remember New Orleans? They sent us a fire engine to replace on lost on 9\11. Remember 9\11 Dunleavy? Obviously not. Father Michael Judge in heaven, pray for you to be forgiven your forgetfulness, the gay and Gay priest who served his flock, the FDNY to the last moment of his life.

There when you need them

So, put them back, a half hour into the parade, if you have the gall. But, if you do, the parade should be a half hour late, and shame to anyone who starts it before those brave men and women. Isn't it time, over time, for Irish New York, to take this parade back from these small minded men, who embarrass us year after year?

Professionals

Engine 33… (Tune Bold Robert Emmett) Lorcan Otway

Flashing lights and no sirens, all emergencies over

The motorcade passes, with the heroes who fell

And all on the streets stop, and in silence bear witness

Such sorrow and thanks, no mere words can tell

Who ever can forget the gray ash covered engines

coming back from the alarm like no other before

Such pain for survivors, to embrace all the families

Of comrades so loved, now on that distant shore

Chief Downey, Father Mike, First Deputy Feehan

Peter Ganci and many too many to tell

Your memories we’ll honor we n'er will forget you

You brought hope to the horror when the two towers fell.

Remember Tim Stackpole, how he prayed in the wreckage

In that terrible fire that took two of his friends

So horribly injured he fought to recover

To return to his ladder and to die with his men

So now to acknowledge, just one of the many

Engine 33 ladder company 9

There’s 10 empty places around their table

10 fallen brothers who fell on the line

Remember Kevin Pfiefer, Mike Boyle and Keith Maynard

Jeff Walz, Brian Bilcher, Robert King Dave Arce

Gerarde Baptiste, Robert Evans, John Tierney,

10 lost out of 40 from one company

And though we mourn them, they’re still on the job now

Though they have fallen, they’re still standing tall

Their spirit will bolster their sisters and brothers

Their unseen presence will answer each call

So tell all your children to tell all their children

never pass a firehouse without a brief pause

And thank all the heroes who work on those engines

Each day they risk all in humanity’s cause

A small note. As a Quaker, I should not name call, should not call Dunleavy and crowd eejits, and I acknowledge this and say, in this I am wrong. But, well ... in the words of Will Smith, from Men In Black ... "Dai-am!" The photos of firefighters don't intimate that the individuals endorse calling Dunleavy et al. names.

Jesus Christ Forbids War

2007-03-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

By John Jeremiah Edminster,
6/16/2005,
Christianity armed is Christianity falsified. The gospel that God gives to men and women through Jesus Christ is a message of peace, and a gift of the power to live in peace. If we accept this gift, we are not shamed, forced, or reasoned into laying down weapons and war. Rather, we are transformed into new creatures. And warfare is alien to this peaceable new creature. The new creature may make war on its own unruly habits, but does not willingly injure another soul.
This creature grows ever more like Jesus Christ, who lived and preached a way of life that often challenged people, but never harmed them. Indeed, as a "new creature in Christ," we now find ourselves becoming a member of Christ’s body, just as an arm, a leg or an eye is a member of your body or mine. This is no mere poetic fancy; membership in Christ can be experienced as truly today as in the days when the Apostle Paul preached it. And what does it mean to become a member of Christ?
Jesus taught His followers not to fight back against evil, but to love their enemies. The Biblical records tell us that when two disciples urged revenge on villages that had refused them hospitality, Jesus rebuked them, saying that He had come "to save men’s lives, not to destroy them." At the scene of His arrest in the Garden, when one of His defenders cut off an attacker’s ear, Jesus disarmed the defender and healed the ear. Questioned by the Roman governor on His alleged claim to kingship, He disowned armed defense of any such claim because His "kingdom was not of this world." Finally, when foes had crucified Him, He prayed from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." His followers maintained the unwavering peaceableness of His witness for over two centuries, again and again choosing martyrdom over a recourse to arms.
Because Jesus accepted torture and death rather than protect Himself by force, it should come as no surprise that His disciples taught, not arts of self-defense, but the acceptance of all suffering as experience knowingly permitted by a trustworthy God who will one day "wipe away all tears from our eyes." And so the living Christ teaches us today – to accept suffering when it can’t be avoided, but without seeking to inflict injury in return. "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves," He instructs: "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."
To become a member of this Person is to lose the knack of hardening one’s heart on which the power to wage war depends. Consistently, Jesus taught not new rules for outward conduct but new depths of compassion. This compassion is not to be won without struggle, but the struggle we are now called to is an inward one, a work of "casting down imaginations." For this, spiritual weapons are needed, and not the "carnal" ones by which blood is shed. "Be perfect," He tells us, "like your Heavenly Father:" meaning that we are to be bountiful to the just and unjust alike, as God is with His gift of rain.
War and fighting, taught the Apostle James, come from uncontrolled desires, and the determination to snatch by force what God may not be granting because it is not in our best interests to have it. We are admonished to show respect and obedience to sword-bearing civil authorities, but also to take no part in the "futile works of darkness." If they ask of us what we cannot give, we must choose obedience to God over obedience to men and women. How then to respond to the world’s many invitations to support warfare? As the Living God instructs us through our conscience. All this is not to pass judgment on fellow believers that listen for the voice of Christ, but feel they have not been told to forsake all things that make for war. To them we say, in all love and respect: just keep listening.

Today a great lie goes masquerading in Christ’s robes. It appears wherever apologists for war, or lethal injection, or lying, or ravaging the earth, or profiteering off human weakness, seek to persuade us that these evils are O.K. for Christians to take part in. How easily they fool us! We’re all too eager to imagine God smiling on all the old, familiar ways that the world does things: think how our ancestors bought into slavery, genocide, the whipping of children and the subjugation of women! Or we fancy God blessing the new ways that the experts say are now necessary: If nuclear weapons, disinformation, torture of detainees, and use of the products of unfree labor are necessary in this modern world, how could Christ fault Christians for participating in a necessary system?
This makes it terribly important for followers of Christ to stand against falsifications of Christ’s gospel message of love toward all – a message that can’t be maintained by anyone armed to kill. Neither is it credible to many a non-Christian who, surveying Christian history, looks on its record of slaughter – crusade, inquisition, witch-hunt, massacre, pogrom. How did we Christians become such hypocrites?
Christ instructed his followers to be faithful "even unto death." The apostle Paul reinforced Jesus’ peaceable gospel by repudiating "carnal warfare" and "carnal weapons" in almost all his writings. And Christians of the first two centuries, faithful unto death, routinely accepted execution rather than serve in the Roman army. By the end it was well known that Christians would die rather than bear arms. But within a century all that was gone. What happened? Had Christians given in to fear? Did successful evangelism fill the Church with young new converts who didn’t "get" the peace testimony before the military recruiters came for them? Did the example of one Christian youth in uniform make it easier for the next one to accept conscription, starting a chain reaction?
With the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine in 312 it became acceptable to dominate by the sword "in Christ’s name," and by the time of Aquinas’s Summa Theologica in the Thirteenth Century, the "just war" theory had become standard Christian doctrine. Christians who sought to reclaim their original nonviolent tradition over the centuries were often silenced or killed, though ultimately the Anabaptists, Quakers and others in the modern era, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, recovered it, stood by it, and survived. Today, in most democracies, a Christian pacifist may rarely expect to have to be "faithful even unto death." But Christ has not ceased to ask that of us. We are still challenged to trust in His Providence rather than put our faith in the protection of anyone’s gun.
The peace testimony of such Christians is rarely preached on street corners, because it can’t be promoted like a political program, with appeals to self-interest or humane ideals. For it can’t be separated from the gospel faith in which it is rooted, which converts us into a "new creature" capable of both understanding it and living it. The new creature is graced with an infectious inner peace that endures, if God wills, as well under oppression or martyrdom as under outward liberty. But the old creature can neither understand nor live this: "For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God."
This "preaching," or message, of the cross is the only alternative to the way of the world, in which mutual fear, anger and ignorance will forever provide grounds for the pre-emptive attack that starts a war. Only the way of the cross, by which men and women renounce the right to kill to protect their own lives, removes these grounds. This can only seem foolishness to a world for whom death is the greatest evil, and self-preservation the highest law. "We are fools for Christ’s sake."

And what is this message of the cross? It is this: the One who made you wants you to come home to your God. God means you to enjoy the peace, knowledge, and joy of the Divine Fullness, beyond time and change. God dwells in your heart, sees through your eyes, and knows your every thought – yes, including all the ones you wish no one knew. But there is not a foolish, or shameful, or evil thing you have done, or wished to do, or had others do for you, that God is not willing to forgive. God forgives it so that it may no longer keep you from perfect enjoyment of your heavenly inheritance. But to receive this forgiveness, you must turn to God and ask to be freed from "bondage to sin" – a technical term, often misunderstood as a matter of outward offenses, for an inward addiction to whatever draws us away from God’s light and love.
For this reason, people that have experienced this "repentance to salvation" have described it as being "born again" or being given "a new heart." This process does not magically leave us immune to temptation, of course, or incapable of error or further growth. We must still "work out our salvation with fear and trembling." But from now on, whenever we find ourselves lacking in the courage, or wisdom, or faith to do what God asks of us, we learn that God will give it to us merely for the asking. This means that we are free to live without our old defenses, "wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." For no one harms us except by "power given from above," so that we may say with the Psalmist, "I will not fear what flesh can do to me." This same creation, once seen as a battlefield of mutually opposing elements, a chaos of chance without Providence, now appears to us as one organism in which "all things work together for good to them that love God."
This is the essence of the "good news" of salvation in Jesus Christ, who died and rose again to free us from slavery to sin, and who now lives, teaches, and reigns as king in the hearts of those here on earth who accept Him – under whatever name a particular heart may know its Savior by. This new life in Christ is a good life, the best of lives; but it requires us to die to the old self we knew, and so frightens many not ready for it. This is why so many of us choose an inauthentic Shadow Christianity, which allows us to hope for a Christian’s heavenly reward but keep one foot in a corrupt world largely run by the ignorant and self-serving, ruled by fear, foul with injustice, full of the glitter of false goods.. But this Shadow Christianity will fail us in trouble and death, and must be discarded. It does not save.
A time of great pain and trial is upon us now. As a global civilization we’ve responded to our challenges shamefully, and as individuals, inadequately. All the world’s religions have taught that we must reap as we have sown, so we can foresee a frightful harvest as the world heats up, nuclear waste piles up, and oil, topsoil and fresh water run out. Will we repent in time? Or will Christ tell us, on that final day when we are shown all the souls we’ve injured, "inasmuch as you did this to these, you did it to Me?"

John Jeremiah Edminster, 6/16/2005, as revised 3/9/2007.
The writer is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Publication of this tract is made possible by a grant from
the Witness Coordinating Committee of the New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
For more information on the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), call the New York Yearly Meeting, (212) 673-5750.
This tract is downloadable at www.jesusforbidswar.org. Thoughtful responses are welcomed at the website.

Bible citations are from the King James Version (KJV), New Jerusalem Bible (NJB), or Revised Standard Version (RSV).

We are all the resurrection

2007-02-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

Well, in all the anger over some scholars and scientists stating that there is a high likelihood that they have found the body of Yeshua and his family, I am called to think of what it might mean if it is indeed true.

The central core of Yeshua's ministry was that we were to feed each other, both literally and figuratively. One finds this from the start of his ministry with the woman at the well, to the miracle of the fishes, the surmon on the mount, to his last supper when he says do this (eat together feed each other) in memory of me. For me, it means the most believably accurate resurrection story, the one free of mything, is the one where the disciples are fed by a stranger on the beach and it hits them ... he is risen.

In this it means, we are all the resurrection when we feed each other body and soul. In the same light we are the risen Martin King when we stand for the rights of each other, the risen Martin King and the risen Yeshua, feeding each other's soul. We are the risen John F. Kennedy when we turn from war towards peace, the risen Kennedy and the risen Yeshua, feeding each other's souls. We are the risen Mother Teresa, when we tend to the forgotten sick, the risen Mother Teresa and the risen Yeshua feeding each other's bodies and souls.

In finding a body, his body, we strip away the idol, which we so easily place the burden of our faith upon. We cannot have a physical idol to bear our sins, and our virtues. We must repent - turn around and look at our actions and life, in order to atone - to mitigate the damage from our simply being and consuming, and forgive - forgive those who cannot atone for that which they must take to live. The responsibility for living the teachings of Yeshua falls upon our shoulders to be the risen Christ.

Manya Louie Jack "The Baron" Gorman

2007-02-23T18:43:00.000-08:00

I just heard that my good friend, my brother Jack "The Baron" Gorman died last Tuesday. Jack was every bit a Traveller, as proud of his people's history and place on this world as any member of a royal family. Jack began a branch of the Irish Traveller Movement in the United States, having linked up with the ITM in Europe. He wrote to them of the conditions of Travellers here. Proud to be Traveller, proud to be Gypsy. He remembered the horse drawn days in America, and was a great story teller ... stories of horse trading (he sold his father a horse his father owned once... ) and the richness of nomadic life in America.If anyone knows him in Indiana, I hope they see he has a broken wheel placed on his grave. Lasho drom, prala.
Jack, ya died too young, shem, we hardly knew ye.

ABOLITION

2007-02-17T12:39:00.000-08:00

Eva Mitton Otway

Eva's Badge, Handkerchief and Prayer Book

One day, as I moved the beds from our Quaker shelter, for those who have no place to sleep in this cold city, I saw bags stacked with the sheets which were to be used for these beds. My heart broke and I could not touch them. On them was the stain of slavery, the brutality of rape, the chains, the cold hearted men with cold steal guns ... on them was printed their source, they were maintained by my sisters and brothers in the slavery of prison. Sometimes hearts need to be broken, and I am humbled that I have no words to break the hearts of Friends who can touch these sheets, as though it was no burden.
My Grandmother was named Eva. Many of her generation where named Eva. Maybe it was her name which led her to a life of bonnet and badge. She was a Sally Ann. Her generation's parents had their hearts broken by a book, today it seems hard to believe that Uncle Tom's Cabin could break hearts, souls weep for little Eva. However, those words broke hearts and burdened souls, and helped to break chains, melt iron shackles and iron hearts.
Slavery was the way things were, like war, something we could not get past, though all knew it was so wrong, obscene, a stain on the soul of each of us. And, this stain spread beyond the cotton and tobacco and rice plantations. Slavery lessened all of us, made us less that which we should have been.

And so it is with slavery today. We know the schools are unequal, the jobs unfairly doled out, the prisons growing like crops of tobacco, and now run for profit. Prison labor, labor at the point of a gun and chained down is now part of the American system in every state. Prison instead of school, prison instead of equal opportunity, prison with courts as a middle passage. For some, there is no manumission, but slavery for life, for three felonies, passing bad checks has placed a mother who could not feed her children in slavery for life. A teenager who is entrapped into buying enough cocaine to be jailed for life, has the collar of slavery around his neck for life. One out of every one hundred and twenty-five Americans are in these chains, and that number is born in remarkably more horrific numbers by those who are not of the complexion and class of most Friends.

Eva preached in prisons. She said that is where the sinners are. I don't think she would say so today. I think Eva, today would say the jailor is the sinner and that each of us who takes what the prisoner makes, is, in that act, a jailor.

So, at meeting for business, when voices ask, we must look into conditions in prison before we reject these sheets as products of slavery, when some say, it depends on how one "feels about punishment"... I am left wondering how to break hearts, that someday we might break chains.

There it is...

2007-02-12T08:10:00.000-08:00

My own epilogue, at the completion of presenting "Quakerism, A View From the Back Benches."
A remarkable piece of writing and example of searching. I feel the act of retyping it, as a call to us to take up the challenge in the View From the Back Benches, was a journey with beloved elders. Now, what do we do? I take seriously the call to define ourselves as a community of faith, not by theology, but by practice. To call myself a Friend, I feel called on to love.

To love is really the whole ball of yarn. How can we be "Children of Light," or call ourselves "peace makers," if we do not actively, energetically, earnestly spread love in the Society of Friends? Spreading love, is not to accept all each other do as all right, but rather, to love as both a parent and child each member of the Society of Friends, as practice for loving each person in the world. Frankly, I believe that this is the single defining convergence in our Society, and in the family of God.

Ever dearly, dear fFriends
In frith and Friendship

lor

EPILOGUE: What to do until the second coming

2007-02-12T07:51:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

EPILOGUE
WHAT TO DO UNTIL THE SECOND COMING

In this pamphlet we have made a number of Outrageous Proposals for experimental changes in the Society of Friends. Our aim has been to suggest ways in which we might deepen our worship, improve the life of our meetings and strengthen our witness in the world. We have not tried to produce a “blueprint” for the Society; nor have we tried to comment on every aspect of Friends’ faith and practice. For us, the important thing has been to make a beginning - to stop waiting for a Second Coming or other miraculous intervention to challenge or change our lives, and to move ahead with our responsibilities as “Sons of God” and “Children of Light.”

Our discussions have raised some other topics with which we do not deal here: for example, Quakerism and the sexual revolution; the testimony on alcohol and tobacco; theological differences among Friends; and others. We may explore these further in the future.

No doubt some Friends will find our present proposals much too outrageous; others may feel the do not go far enough. In either case, we ask Friends to consider these suggestions with serious good humor, realizing that laughter as well as impassioned argument and meditative silence produced them.

As we present this first collection of observations from the back benches, we should like to commend to Friends no merely our ideas but the manner of our search. Our meetings and strivings together have persuaded us that perhaps this search is best carried on by small, self-starting groups of Friends who share a common concern for the state of the society and an openness and willingness to experiment with change.

We can’t help but hope for an enlargement of the total company of questioners and searches; and we feel a deep sense of fellowship with all those who strive to put into practice what the Light has shown them to be the truth.

Conflict Within the Society of Friends

2007-02-12T05:59:00.001-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Conflict Within the Society of Friends

Conflict is not always an negative in a relationship; sometimes the lack of means of conflict may encourage one side to withdraw, while if the conflict continued, the relationship would continue (often to a new degree of understanding).

With characteristic shrewdness, early Friends evolved a form of decision-making which institutionalized conflict and provided the means for continuing the relationship of Friends to each other. The meeting for business in a sense, valued conflict so positively that it maximized the opportunity for continuing it. It provided a way of having peace and conflict too.

It seems to us, however, that the meeting for business is no longer adequately providing the means of conflict which continues relationships. Again and again we see a committee discouraged from bringing a statement to the whole Meeting for fear of troubling the waters, discussion of whole areas of life avoided (such as pacifism, Negroes, and sex) for fear of unseemly emotion and conflict, theological discussions turned off for fear of disagreement.

This phenomenon might be interpreted as a lack of caring for each other - we’ve stopped being interested in each other’s views. A different perspective might explain it as a reflection of middle-class view in which superficial courtesy is deemed more important than old-fashioned forthrightness. However this condition may be tied in with other aspects of our existence, it seems clear that important areas of life are no longer being shared by most Friends. A large area of latent conflict is between generations: young Friends rarely talk with older Friends in group settings about issues with really grip them. And the withdrawal of young Friends from active participation in the Meeting is frequent. In other sections we have pointed to the lack of strenuous searching and acting on the testimonies, also partly arising from fear of conflict with those Friends holding a different point of view.

Whether or not conflicts are brought into the open and discussed, a good deal of hostility is generated among members of a Meeting. What happens to the at hostility? For some it remains free-floating, occasionally attaching itself to a minor issue in the Meeting. Sometimes the hostility turns to caucusing; against "the rules" of good order of Friends, factions develop. For others, the meeting for worship provides a resolution: the lump of bitterness is dissolved in God's love. But, for still others the meeting for worship is experienced as another exercise in control, rather than release.

In practice today we drive hostility underground, but have provided no corporate release. Without corporate release, the hostility is most often seen in individual griping ( which brings guilt in its wake and further atomization of the Meeting).
As this happens, the Meeting becomes more of a group to relate to functionally rather than a source of sustenance and identity. Some able Friends get their sustenance elsewhere and “operate” in the Meeting, which thereby becomes for them more like a social club or political organization than a religious society.
Does this, we wonder, have something to do with the lose of participation of young people? The young, after all, especially need releases as well as controls. What is a form or release from the tension which is suitable to Friends? Many Friends have already found group recreation, especially that which uses the whole body, to be deeply satisfying. It offers self forgetfulness, cooperation, respite from wordiness, and fun. Personal antagonisms can be melted in the corporate warmth of humor.

What concrete suggestions can we offer for the release of hostility and true resolution, not the covering up, of conflict? It is popular among Friends to scorn debates as subversive of truth; in the heat of battle and urge to score points, honest searching is lost. But our hunch is that Friends have moved to the opposite extreme: in the cold “harmony,” honest searching is lost. Therefore, we propose that Meetings in this condition hold a series of formal debates or threshing sessions on subjects of controversy, going beyond dialogue, to learn how to disagree and still to love, how to contest and to grow. Thus we will be facing up to controversy rather than hiding it under the benches, striving instead to use it as a tool to work out solutions and bring us together on a deeper level.

to be continued)

Chapter VI Controversy in the Meeting

2007-02-11T16:28:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

CHAPTER VI

CONTROVERSY IN THE MEETING:

Conflict Can Be Fun

In the seventeenth century the truth about God and men and the access they should have to one another seemed fresh and new to Quakers. It seemed to be something worth fighting for. So Friends engaged in conflict with great zeal. The popular notion that Friends committed civil disobedience only when societies law attacked them is untrue: for example, Friends went several thousand miles out of their way to “attack” the happy little commonwealth of Puritans in Massachusetts, for the sake or witnessing to the truth.

In no respect have Friends changed so much as in this, for now, the Quaker responses to conflict are usually “example” and “reconciliation.” Ourselves, having cooled down, we are interested in cooling down others. Consequently, we have moved from being pilloried by society to being pillars of society.

It is not, of course, that Friends took to the sword in their zeal for the truth. Part of the truth was the insight that each man is potentially enlightened by God and is, therefore, of infinite worth. The result of the tension between the need to strive for the truth, and respect for one’s brother, was nonviolent action: the prosecution of conflict on behalf of truth by means other than physical and psychological violence. In other words, the fact that Friends could not war with outward weapons did not alleviate their responsibility to war with the spiritual weapons available to them.

But history is clear. Most Friends dropped the requirement to striving for the sake of the truth, and instead adopted a strategy of example which haunts us to this day - “If everyone were like us, all this nastiness wouldn’t happen.” (Some of our critics, take us up on it - “if everyone were like you, we wouldn’t have to drop napalm bombs.”)
Example, unfortunately, is not enough (as neighbors of the Amish could have told us), and the attempt to mediate all conflicts at whatever stage and no matter what the issue is more a compulsive meddling than it is honoring the truth.

Neither example nor reconciliation is sufficient by itself. Each, however, makes its contribution in action which speaks truth to power. It can intervene on the side of the victim of injustice, but in a way which has both an exemplary and a reconciling character. This strategy is what Gandhi called satyagraha and we call nonviolence.

(to be continued)

At All Times

2007-02-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

At All Times

We should review at frequent intervals our forms, procedures and committees to see if they serve our current needs an, if not, revise them with the ruthlessness of truth. We must not drift into ritual in business any more than in worship. The Society cannot afford to be a procedural museum.

“Business” for Friends is not confined to appointed sessions. Between sessions, at the personal level, we must reconcile those differences, which have become apparent. Anticipating others’ reactions to planned proposals, we ought to consult with Friends who may disagree before presenting an item to the Meeting. Little will be gained, usually by precipitating differences on the floor of the Meeting when advance soundings might have disclosed an alternative satisfactory to all.

Finally we suggest that there be more worship in meetings for business and committee meetings, not just when intractable differences arise but at all times when direction seems lacking. We profess that we will be guided in all things; we should allow opportunity to be guided.

(to be continued)

Voting?

2007-02-10T08:21:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Voting?

Friends might well re-consider use of voting in business sessions, particularly for routine items or matters of simple preference. When aesthetics only are involved, a vote may be more honest than the clerks guess. Voting is only an evil in those matters where consensus is important, where conciliation of opposing points of viewpoints is necessary to maintain love and unity. To have a vote, a member or the clerk could suggest that the item under discussion (a) is not related to our ancient testimonies, (b) needs an answer certain and clear, and (c) is a matter of creaturely convenience or preference, not principle. If the Meeting united with the Friend so characterizing the item, a vote would be taken and its result would be the decision of the Meeting. If Friends did not agree to the vote, our usual procedures would be used for the item. If only one Friend objected to voting, on the ground that the necessary decision was a matter of principle, he would be asked to decide the matter, and his decision would be the decision of the Meeting because he is the only Friends with light on the subject.

Polling the Meeting may be a technique where disunity is felt, but not expressed. A minority in the Meeting should not remain silent and subsequently disclaim involvement or responsibility for the Meeting‘s decision. If such a minority is sensed, the clerk should call on each Friend present to express opinion. But the Meeting using such a poll would have to accept the long search for unity which disclosed differences would demand. Our procedures should be able to bring us to unity in fact, not only in appearance.

(to be continued)

Innovations and Improvements

2007-02-09T14:29:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Innovations and Improvements

To improve business sessions, Friends might consider clearer definition of the duties of the clerk, of attenders, and committees. More delegation, to the clerk and committees, of executive powers and discretion to handle matters arising between sessions, to classify business as routine, to skip routine minute approvals and to set the order of business might free up time in many meetings for discussion of concerns. A scheduled period early in the session for individuals to raise concerns may help to keep discussion of concerns out of meetings for worship, as Friends realize that the business session is a more appropriate, available forum. It would be healthy if Meetings adopted a practice of dropping immediately any concern raised which no individual accepted. That practice would distinguish swiftly and surely between intellectually conceived “good works” and “Quaker concerns.” For if the “concern” is truly something which weighs on Friends, they will take it up, sooner or later. The other “good works” simply overburden the Meeting’s resources.

Lack of oversight in some Meetings lets omission or non-performance of assigned service pass unnoticed. Follow-up is needed. Some Meetings use the practice of “answering the minutes.” When a minute charging a committee or individual with a duty is read at the subsequent session, that committee or individual is required to report on progress. Delegation to the clerk or a committee of authority to remind appointees to act may be useful when duties run over several months. And “needle” might be a more appropriate verb than “remind” in many cases. Since Friends are perhaps more parochial in their business procedures than in their worship, it might be even useful for Yearly Meetings to appoint a Friend as a sort of “inspector-general” to travel among the various monthly meetings to view business procedures. His report might prove most edifying.

A necessary function, often unrecognized, is that of parliamentarian, a person present at the session who has a greater knowledge of procedure and precedent than most and who can advise, disinterestedly, as to proper methodology. The clerk, or Friends active in discussion, often cannot fulfill this role and the Meeting frequently will not accept the advice of a Friend not recognized for proficiency in this area. Meetings that have much procedural discussion might find it useful to formalize the function by appointing a Friend to this advisory role.

(to be continued)

Speech and Speakers

2007-02-09T11:56:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Speech and Speakers

A business session must always be a matter of balance. Discussion cannot be programmed and openness to enlightenment from all sources must be cherished.. But business sessions can be incredibly dull and boring when irrelevant pettiness is given time and consideration. Freedom and openness are not ends in themselves, and the religious ends they are designed to serve are subverted when niggling displaces sober seeking. A taut distinction between the important and the unimportant must be maintained. Therefore Friends must consider their speaking in meeting for business with seriousness. We have a duty to make known our conclusions, to at least nod agreement or disagreement for the clerks guidance, but speech should be brief and to the point. Longwinded and thoughtless discourse should not be accorded weight just because of the speaker’s seniority or status in the Meeting or in the community.

“Weight” in decision making should come from an individual’s knowledge and action and spiritual guidance in the area of decision. A deep sensibility and insight should receive more attention than a creaturely or worldly facility or familiarity with the object of discussion. “Weight” of individuals should shift within the Meeting with the subject matter. Mechanical consideration of persons is offensive to the theory of our procedure.

Humor and wit may have a role in our sessions to restore proportion and ease. Anger and indignation may be appropriate to give force and emphasis to a concern, but humor and anger, as expressions of personality, should be used with care and restraint, for the spirit, not the person or personality, should govern.

(to be continued)

Committees

2007-02-09T11:54:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Committees

The role of committees in a Meeting may vary, but normally committees should be appointed carefully, and given full freedom to act and to decide matters within their commission. The business session should not be burdened with trivia (such as the color of meeting house drapes or carpet). Committees should dispose of such details so the business session may consider concerns and basic policy. Conversely the Meeting must trust the judgment of its committee on such details. If the business sessions merely re-hashes committee deliberations, committees might well be scrapped. We feel that most property matters, other than the philosophy of use or major new commitments, fall into the area of committee competence and should not be presented to the Meeting.

The way a committee reports often foreshadows the discussion to follow. A clear, concise presentation of pertinent facts and issues with a detailed technically precise proposal for action will elicit, normally, rational comment to its point. A fuzzy statement of issues or facts without a procedurally sound suggestion for action will provoke, usually, wide-ranging, vague and impertinent discussion.

If committees are widely representative of points of view in the Meeting, their reports are more likely to be accepted because such reports will of necessity express more generally the opinion of the meeting. Isolation of special interest groups of a Meeting in a committee may well use, over the long run, more of the Meeting’s time and be more divisive than if a broadly based committee were first appointed.

(to be continued)

Procedures Good and Bad

2007-02-09T06:08:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Procedures Good and Bad

The methods by which Friends conduct business are an integral part of our religious profession. We use the sense of the Meeting” because common search in a spirit of worship gives direct, unifying guidance. The procedure of a clerk presenting minutes for approval after complete and open discussion is an historical survival, but serves well as a simple and accurate method of recording action approved or opinion expressed. The clerk is only a servant of the business session recording its collective will, not an officer exercising authority over other Friends. Each session of a meeting possesses plenary power because a belief in the consistency of the leadings of truth.

However, Friends inevitably carry into meeting for business their experiences of other procedures used in corporations, government, politics or other organizations. With such background, when time, efficiency or the end sought obsess Friends, they may resort to Roberts’ Rules of Order rather than Faith and Practice. But the session is a meeting for worship with a concern for business. The methods used must reflect that fact.

Our procedure requires much of our members, for all should exhibit much knowledge, forbearance, and honesty and should be diligent with their “homework” prior to meetings. Businesslike sessions will result if all Friends are familiar with the Meeting’s methods and routines, with the various committees’ and their responsibilities and with other Friends’ capabilities concerns and personal pressures. If Friends require explanation of each step during business, ramble over committees’ duties, and assign inappropriate service to individuals, confusion will become endemic. Procedure and forms should be guides and ground rules to allow a smooth flow of serious business; they should not be matters for constant debate or devices used to avoid open discussion of issues. If Friends know, accept and habitually use our procedures to conduct all business, and to explore new areas of concern, the meeting can deal with business on its merits and with dispatch.

(to be continued)

THE MEETING FOR BUSINESS

2007-02-09T06:07:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

CHAPTER V

THE MEETING FOR BUSINESS:

Prophetless Procedure

(this chapter has been written in the context of the present, large Meeting. Some of its observations are irrelevant for any smaller “house Quaker” groups into which large Monthly Meetings might well be broken, as we have suggested elsewhere. In a group of 15 to 30 adults, much business would be conducted informally as a committee of the whole - but even then, some tasks should be delegated, and the basic business method should be used. At whatever level - Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly Meeting, or larger Friends gathering - a more careful husbandry of time and effort will give better results and indeed, result in a more loving spirit.)

(to be continued)

The Society Itself

2007-02-09T05:38:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

The Society Itself

Theoretical consideration might be given to the complete abandonment of the Society. As a curious relic of the past, it might be assigned to the care and attention of various Quaker curators who are available to serve the memory of Quakers past. A few buildings might be maintained by a Quaker trust fund as examples of historic Quaker architecture. We must ask ourselves: would a direct inside-challenge calling for the dissolution of the Society as no longer needed - or as no longer carrying a particular torch well enough - assist Quakers to think through what it’s all about?

The test of use, a Quaker test of utility, is needed, and the Society itself, in addition to its various forms and expressions, must be viewed from the same perspective.

Some suggest that a “Continuing Committee for Reform in Quakerism” is needed as a gadfly to stimulate discussion stir things up, etc. As a focal point, it might be helpful. But such a committee might too easily become just another institution. Certainly it is true that form should follow function in Quakerism as everywhere else, and we should not hesitate to abandon forms which have no function today. Each Meeting might consider, in a hot discussion session, how this might be done.

(to be continued)

Yearly Meeting

2007-02-09T05:36:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Yearly Meeting

We are less clear, according to the use test, on the function of Yearly Meeting and other associations in terms of advancing the Quaker cause. Yearly Meeting and other national and international groups have a conserving function, I.e., preserving the Society of Friends as it is now. Little has happened which suggests another possible role. Maybe a national cabinet or group of wise men could help us to think through guide lines for worship and discipline, but at present the burden and expense of Yearly Meeting are hard to justify.

(to be continued)

First Day Schools

2007-02-09T05:35:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

First Day Schools?

Religious education of the young in these new small meetings opens up possibilities for experience not presently available in the keep-the-kids busy view we hold now. At present many adults and children alike consider the Sunday School “the enemy.” To teach children may be an anomaly for the Society, for truth is not transmitted but experienced. Canned lessons should be abolished, and in lieu of First-Day School, perhaps Quakers could provide settings for withdrawal next to every meeting for worship, to which adults and children could retire for reading, service projects, and in the case of the quite young, guided play. Children would learn more through participation with adults in action on our testimonies, which gives them a sense of belonging far greater than going to First-Day school. Perhaps after such participation, children would be able to center down in meeting for worship also, feeling a true center. Older young people, if they felt vitality in the thought of the adults, would be interested in the discussion and study group which might follow meeting for worship.

(to be continued)

New Role for Quarterly Meetings

2007-02-09T05:32:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

New Role for Quarterly Meetings

Under the circumstances of a renewed Society, with smaller community units, Quarterly Meeting may have a role. Many large Monthly Meetings, if distributed in new configurations, might become the new Quarterly Meetings. (Quarterly Meetings probably cannot be revived effectively under today’s configurations to serve a clear function.)

If there were no meeting house in the Quarter, perhaps renting facilities would do. Or a Friends Community Center or other institution could serve as the place for Quarterly Meeting. At any rate, Quarterly Meeting would act as a center to hold together the Monthly Meeting which had split into smaller “house” meetings. There is also the possibility that Quarterly Meetings, rather than Monthly Meetings, could be the holders of property, trust funds, etc.

(to be continued)

Smaller Monthly Meetings

2007-02-09T05:31:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Smaller Monthly Meetings

It is natural to presume that when a local Meeting gets to large for a rented public facility or for a living room, consideration should be given to a meeting house. Why is it that consideration is not given instead to subdividing the group? Is there some Quaker attraction of bigness, as such, a surprising situation considering our experience with the availability of the holy spirit to small groups? Are Quakers low-keyed Presbyterians? Frustrated cathedral-builders? Could something be gained by breaking down into units of ten or twelve families?

(to be continued)

Does a Meeting Exist to Maintain Property?

2007-02-08T15:22:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Does a Meeting Exist to Maintain Property?

Only a rare Monthly Meeting devotes its time and energy and money for service outside the Society. When questions of activity in the community arise, the few individuals pressing for decision are often discouraged or, worse, referred to committee. The constant concern for meeting house maintenance, property needs, cemetery upkeep, or new building funds, suggests an inner weakness of the Society. An illusion of activity and importance is created by these building and property concerns, but in terms of the higher calling of the Quakers, this is no activity at all worthy of the name of Quaker. Any fair time-study of the average meeting for business would undoubtedly reveal an undue proportion of time and money given to housekeeping functions. It is no wonder few people attend meetings for business.

The question arises: is there a possibility Quakers should give up these cumbersome properties? Why are they so sacred? Why is any particular meeting house of concern to Quakers, as Quakers? If an historical society is interested, perhaps it could maintain such a place as a museum.

All cemeteries should be turned over to a Friend Cemetery Corporation or corporations formed exclusively for this purpose.

Is there a meeting house that is used through the week, that is really a community center? Given Quaker insights, most meeting houses should be closed and no new ones should be built until we can justify their possession not only by the ease with which we can handle their maintenance, but also by the service to which we put them. To obtain maximum utility, we might cooperate with other groups in building facilities. The Quaker test, seldom expressed this way, is really utility, usefulness to the Lord.

A hard Quaker look at facilities would refresh the entire religious community, itself overloaded with property and buildings for its churches. And Friends should re-evaluate our acceptance of the special privilege of tax-exempt status for religious organizations. A fresh Quaker response on this question would prompt the comment, “just what you would expect of Quakers.”

(to be continued)

CHAPTER IV QUAKER ORGANIZATION

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Quakerism: a view from the back benches continued

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

CHAPTER IV

QUAKER ORGANIZATION:

A Side Long Glance

Are the units of organization in the Religious Society of Friends productive? Are the efficient? Can the unites “at work” produce maximum gain? If there are limitations, what are they?
There have been changes in structure over the centuries, or changes in emphases and role, surely… each change answering new needs. In terms of today’s needs, are there appropriate criticisms of our Society’s organisms and suitable alternatives available for consideration?
If the technical organization exists to serve the spiritual purposes of the Society, perhaps we have moved quite unintentionally into a situation where we are serving the institutions of the Society, possibly beyond their capacity to be useful.

To review our current organizational posture, we see that the Monthly Meeting is the local unit, the congregation. The Monthly Meeting, or in some cases the Preparative Meeting, embodying procedures for worship and action, is the unit to which the individual Friend relates. The local Meeting tends to be the most sensitive instrument, for basic confrontation of individuals occurs here. One “lives” with the local Meeting. Understanding, accommodation and growth therefore can occur most substantially in a local Meeting.

Beyond the local Meeting are the Quarterly Meeting and the Yearly Meeting. (There are other variations throughout the United States, I.e., regional associations). These conduct some common endeavors when needed and provide limited opportunities for sharing, consultation and fellowship.

Beyond the Yearly Meeting level, Friends meet at the consultative level. Friends World Committee are examples: what occurs is not by authority but by common consent. With responsibility for husbandry of Quaker values and certain prescribed activities, these unites tend to function not as advanced leadership but as the least common denominator of administration.

Internal critics of Quakerism are torn between the poles of authoritative action and decisiveness and the equally important virtues of decentralization. Can a life be found for Quakerism which will permit action yet leave the Society free of higher-than-thou authorities?
No doubt, some of the suggestions which follow may seem to duplicate those in the chapter on Community. They are really the same concern looked at from a different angle.

(to be continued)

Chapter III The Meeting For Worship

2007-02-07T07:05:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches continued

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Chapter III

THE MEETING FOR WORSHIP

Is Thee Worshiping More and Enjoying it Less?

We are convinced that the experience of worship is central to our lives as Quakers and to the continued vitality of the Religious Society of Friends. For each, worship should be the whole of life. The “meetings for worship,” those times when Friends gather formally to worship together, should be seen in the context of a larger whole. And Friends should not limit such meetings to 11:00 a.m. on Sundays at a meeting house, but should accept all occasions which arise to worship together.

The meeting for worship is a corporate activity which, at its best, results in a spiritual experience for those attending. We feel a need for a definition in modern terms of the aim of the meeting for worship to speak to current generations. The aim must be common to the worshipping group, but it must be expressed in forms meaningful to the various views of Friends. And we must be cautious of words, for they are crude reflections of the reality we seek.
Friends believe that something will happen when we gather and, expecting or hoping, fall into silence. We recognize the happening when it occurs and the prophetic ministry which sometimes results. But our articulation of explanations of these things which we recognize must be secondary to the experience. We need freedom of expression, but should exercise that freedom with discipline.

Our meetings are “unprogrammed”. However, they should not be formless. We all have tendencies to fall away from the light into mechanical routine, into observance of ritual. When this occurs and form comes from without, we should be willing to make mechanical changes, to carry the pattern of outward action, so that a frozen style of “Sunday morning thinking” is shattered. To centerdown, one should approach worship as a new experience each time.
We recommend a relaxed and informal attitude to the outward trappings. It may be hard to arrive at meeting in tolerance of mind when trying to look too nice or to correct each fault one’s children may display.

The ills of meetings for worship are simple to catalog: dead silence, excessive silence which regards outer disturbances as offenses against holiness, obsessive and excessive vocal ministry; debates; long and rambling speeches; entertainments; quotes; clippings; too detailed family history or person anecdotes; purloined “nice ideas”; speakers frequent and swift upon their predecessors.

The cures are almost as easy to articulate: (1) individual preparation for meeting through silence, study and prayer so that one enters meeting “strong and stilled and loving,” (2) education of ourselves and the meeting in the purpose, methods and history of Friends worship so all share a knowledge of the goal, recognize the “ministry of listening” and, if moved to speak, avoid recognized pitfalls of ministry, (3) discipline of self to act on our knowledge of proper methods, to hold distractions and distracters in love, to restrain light, frivolous or bitter reactions to events outside our own silence, and (4) discipline of the group by consensus through appointed Friends who consider, at length and at a distance, the needs of the meeting and all the Friends therein and who are able to guide, admonish and encourage Friends in the best ways to improve the meeting for worship.

We are aware of much concern in the Society about vocal ministry. We suggest that more explicit action be taken to guide would-be ministers. All members might be asked to meet to discuss criteria for speaking in meeting. Brevity, clarity and directness should be encouraged. Constant challenges to accept a point of view or a concern may be directed to a more appropriate place for expression and action. Methods of testing leadings, of quenching and waiting can be taught. It can be stressed that the purpose of the meeting is not psychiatric therapy. Appropriate messages will come more readily when Friends are intent of expressions of truth, rather than of ourselves, on expression worthy of the presence we invoke, rather than of the world around us. The leading to speak should cause a personal crisis; the proper response, a sense of comfort. Let us beware of overreaching and of resignation. Let us be aware that the meeting for worship is not our own personal affair.

We suggest that Friends consider the times of the meetings. It may be that mid-week meetings for worship will strengthen the meeting. A period prior to meetings for worship when Friends gather in silence and reverence to do useful manual work may be better preparation than discussion groups or intellectual study. Discussion and intellectual stimulation seem more appropriate after worship. Appointed periods of silence in which all Friends are asked to consider a prearranged subject are a useful supplement to the usual worship. To fit such programs in to the usual time, it might be scheduled: 9:00 a.m. - 1o:00 a.m. group preparation for worship; 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m., Meeting for Worship, 11:00 a.m - 12:00 noon, discussion or programmed meeting. Such changes might help us to utilize more efficiently our resources. We also suggest adopting a general policy not to break the meeting for worship until at least ten minutes after the last message has been delivered.

It is evident to us that improvement in our meetings for worship is indissolubly linked to solution of the other problems currently confronting the Society of Friends; each Sunday morning meeting for worship will influence and will reflect our attitudes towards and actions in the other areas discussed in this paper.

We worship together because the sum is greater than the parts, because the confluence of many experiences is one experience for all, because worship is work and many together working to one end make the task easier for each, and because the example and advice of others at our side help to dampen our excesses and raise our sometime depressions. When we truly worship together we grow to love one another and as we love, we are drawn into deeper communion.
We feel that the goal is worth the cost of gaining it.

(to be continued)

Social Order (Friendly Corrosion)

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Quakerism: a view from the back benches continued

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Social Order (Friendly Corrosion)

The thing which should be said about the concept of a social order is that we are for it - we believe in a system of expectations which ties people together sufficiently well so that they can concentrate on the important things.

But the concept of social order, unfortunately, is generally not the same as the reality. We understand St. Paul’s words to mean that God blesses the idea of ordering human affairs - not that specific orders characterized by slavery, exploitation, and other evils are blessed. Indeed, it seems clear that all societies which ever have existed badly needed changing, and some needed (and need) revolution.

There is a tension, then, between the need for and legitimacy of order (and an authority representing that order), and the need to change that order. Where such a tension exists, we clearly need the guidance of the Light, and a characteristic of Quaker civil disobedience has been this sober leaning on the Light. Indeed, Friends generally obey constitutional authority except when it is clearly invading our rights as children of God, or when we are challenging it for the sake of our brothers.

What this means, of course, is that conflict is built into our relationship to society, and that it is a misplaced emphasis to equate the peace testimony with “harmony.” The excitement generated in Quaker circles by the concept of nonviolence is partly a result of its being a set of techniques which make it possible to work for peace and justice, and to face honestly the creative possibilities in conflict both within and outside the Society of Friends. (See the chapter entitled “Conflict and Controversy” for a fuller exposition of the possibilities which conflict and controversy afford within a Meeting.)

Someone always pays a price for social change. There is no change which does not hurt or inconvenience some in the short run. Yet Friends are among the privileged groups in this country and as unwilling as most to share in paying the price of social change. (“I am moving to the suburbs to get to the better schools - let someone else bear the burden of integrating with the deprived groups.” “If we stay in this changing neighborhood, our house may be broken into. Let someone else take that risk.”) We suggest that the task of discipleship requires that we take on our own privileged shoulders a part of the load from those who are, judging from crime and infant mortality statistics, floundering under its brutal heaviness.

The social order does, of course, involve politics. To help support a Quaker case worker while supporting a government which multiplies (by sins of omission as well as commission) the number of needy cases reveals a pathetic short-sightedness, a lack of political understanding which has long been our weakness. The approaching revolution of cybernation (automatic machines plus computers) may call for a new testimony about the social order based on searching study. It may test whether a dynamic Society of Friends really has what it takes to survive the twentieth century.

(to be continued)

Quaker Education (Myth or Reality)

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Quakerism: a view from the back benches continued

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Quaker Education (Myth or Reality)

It is difficult to generalize about Quaker education. We see many Quaker Schools which are like nothing so much as decent public or private schools; one strains to see anything about them besides the name which would stamp them as Quaker. The Children may hear a little more about good will, but not about pacifism; they often see fewer disadvantaged children than they would in public schools, thus being deprived of a variety of experience and friendship,; they learn how dull silence can be and achieve a certain discipline in its endurance.

On the other hand, there are Quaker schools which are boldly innovative; which put into practice the idea that children can heed the Inward Light, and can act responsibly; which challenge them with the full weight and excitement of Quaker testimonies.

One reason early Friends set up schools was to provide a “guarded education” - a protective atmosphere where the children of a particular people could remain unsoiled by unnecessary contact with the world. This idea is all but dead in Quaker education.

A second idea which led to founding schools was that of offering education to those who would otherwise not have the opportunity, there being no public schools.

Lacking these impulses, the question becomes: Is there really a Quaker theory of education? Some of the undersigned do not think so and believe the schools should be laid down or given away. The Meetings could better use the money for scholarships for work camps, summer institutes, and other forms of dynamic Quaker activity which is testimony-centered. In our concern for non-Quaker children, some of us believe that Quaker time and energy on public school boards and in public pressure groups cold bring quality education to more children than can a Friends school, and be more suitably spread. It is hard to justify the idea that well-to-do children who can afford Quaker school tuition deserve quality education more than the poor.

Others of the undersigned feel that Friends schools could do some extraordinary things which other schools cannot do as easily but this would probably require: (1) faculties composed of Friends, (2) higher proportion of Quaker children, (3) a move closer to the ghetto and away from the suburbs, (4) substantial scholarship aid so that quality education can be offered to those who need it most, (5) daringly experimental approaches to educational methods, (6) a reorientation of goals away from “the percentage place in name-brand colleges” to “ the percentage dedicating themselves to lives of service.”

(To be continued)

Peace (No Cross, No Crown, No Nothing)

2007-02-05T15:01:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches continued

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Peace (No Cross, No Crown, No Nothing)

The peace testimony has been in many ways the glory of Quakerism; it has more than other factor preserved us from the idolatry of nationalism. Since nationalism is most conspicuous and most demanding during wartime, our refusal of military participation enabled us to retain some modicum of objectivity when others were drowning in a sea of subjective patriotism.

It is our impression, however, that the peace testimony is not very strong. Certainly the number of young men becoming conscientious objectors is small. There are Meetings where an applicant for membership is not even asked his convictions on war and peace. One can hear the scantiest and most simple-minded arguments from young army-bound Quakers, indicating that their Meetings have not pressed them to develop even an informed non-pacifist position. Indeed, there are Meetings where the burden of argument is upon the lad is a pacifist, and where the adults accept in a naïve way the State Department line and the jingoist newspaper accounts.

These developments, plus the emergence of Quaker members in the John Birch Society, indicate that nationalism is gaining ground. Peace-concerned Quakers are sometimes upbraided for sounding “unpatriotic” when they call a spade a spade - an atrocity an atrocity. The idea that the American nation-state-like all great powers-is capable of gross immoralities meets with increasing Quaker resistance because our emotional ties are growing stronger to our country. To criticize the government is increasingly to criticize us, at the same time that one hears members of the Society refer to Friends in general as “they.” What is happening but a shift of emotional identification in which one’s religious commitment no longer gives one an objective position from which to judge the behavior of one’s government?

We deeply believe that this is no peripheral issue: this is nothing to shrug off with a murmur about “each to his own light,” This issue goes to the very heart of the continued existence of the Society of Friends as anything like a genuine religious community. When a religious commitment can no longer protect one from the claims of class, of color, or of country, that commitment is nothing but the shadow of piety: it was such that George Fox scorned.

It seems essential, therefore, that no one be admitted to membership who does not intend to refrain from violence against other men. We suggest, too, that by 1975 all present members should be clear that violence is evil and is not justified able under any circumstances. While coming to accept this basic principle, we must develop creative responses to violence, so that our pacifism cannot be a cover for indifference to the claims of justice. The insights of those Friends who do not presently call themselves pacifists will be valued as we engage in this exercise of clarity.

(to be continued)

Race Relations (a Whiter Quaker Fellowship?)

2007-02-05T07:20:00.000-08:00

Quakerism: a view from the back benches continued

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Race Relations ( a Whiter Quaker Fellowship?)

Our Society is not in unity on our testimony on race relations: honesty insists that we admit that we do not yet all agree on full brotherhood. Our testimony against slave-holding was a brave and wonderful thing, once, but we have been living off the spiritual capital there for a long time, and our bookkeeping is so poor that we scarcely now know that we are in debt to the Negroes who might possibly at one time have acknowledged a debt to us.

The stories are endless. There is the Meeting which turned away Negroes on Brotherhood Sunday; there is the Quaker old folks home which openly advertised “For Whites Only;” there is the Quaker college which was integrated only by the Armed Forces; and there are the Quaker Schools which are barely integrated yet.

Our stand-offish attitudes have so cut us off from the Negro community that most Friends do not know how to begin to understand the revolution for human dignity today. Some of our young Friends would like the Society to join the revolution. But how can we, if we do not even know why it is occurring?

Once Friends knew the bitterness of discrimination. Now we are welcomed. Once Friends knew the anxiety of poverty. Now we are privileged. Once Friends knew the desperation of the powerless. Now we are, many of us, powerful in our communities. Could this be the root of it?
Our continuing concern for Negroes has been for them as individuals. Homes and orphanages were set up by Friends, schools and colleges, social agencies for the colored. We do not mean to minimize the work, the pioneering, and the danger represented by some of these efforts. But the focus was always on the individual casualties of our society and not on the institutions which create the casualties.

Whatever the reason, a number of religious groups are far ahead of Friends in the practice of brotherhood, and we should be thankful for a lesson in humility. We need to ask God for forgiveness and cease our segregated practices. We need to join the revolution for human dignity by throwing our political and economic weight behind extensive social change of the conditions of American Life which breed ghettos and discrimination. At the same time, we must accept interracial marriage, the adoption of children of mixed background, and the fact that our Negro Friends are simply members of our Society who need feel no obligation to be “official Negroes.”
The time has come for another look at Quaker work with the Indians as well. Are we, here too, relying on casework and mission approaches to a problem which is political and economic in its nature? When will we press in nonviolent but powerful ways for the rights of the American Indians?

(to be continued)

Quakerism: a view from the back benches continued

2007-02-04T16:59:00.000-08:00

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

The Hireling Ministry (Let George Do It)

Friends have from the beginning felt a distrust of a separate ministry. The Light was in all, and children might be (and were) called to preach, women might be moved to travel long distances in journeys of reconciliation, or agitation, and everyone had a responsibility for spiritual and social work.
We have probably been one of the most successful religious groups in history at maintaining this practice. But the writers of this study, looking about at the growth of Quaker agencies of all kinds, not the phenomenon of the ‘professional Quaker” - a person who, because of his gifts, is hired on a virtually permanent basis to perform a ministry of some kind. Corresponding to this is, we sense, a growing willingness for “rank-and-file” Friends to consider their financial contributions to these agencies as an adequate total participation in the concerns of the Society.
We recognize that this is partly in response to the tensing of our society: it is more difficult to have a career as a professional without investing exorbitant amounts of time in it; in business one either “gets ahead” or gets out; the ability to get away for a couple of years in Quaker service is becoming rarer for people of our general social-economic level.
Recognizing the problem may enable us to take some steps towards its amelioration: Friends agencies might hire only those who have not been employed before in Quaker organization; such agencies might establish strict policies against long-time employment of the same person; every Friend might be strongly encouraged to give one or more years of his working career to a Friends organization, either before beginning his professional career or after retiring from it, much as Peace Corps people are doing.
If there were such a genuinely rotating system of opportunity for service, the Quaker agencies might be giving valuable experience which would then be plowed back into Monthly Meeting life.
(to be continued)

Quakerism: a view from the back benches continued

2007-02-03T10:03:00.000-08:00

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Chapter II

FAITH AND PRACTICE

The Dichotomy Revisited

Introduction:

The testimonies of Friends grew out of the ethical insights provided by the Inner Light and by New Testament teachings, as they seemed relevant to 17th century England. The word "Testimony" can be significant, for the idea was not that Friends should testify to them, inherent in the concept is action as well as belief.

In a time when it is possible for a long-time best-seller to be called "The Power of Positive Thinking," some people are disturbed because the testimonies are often put in a negative way. Perhaps they are so put because of the action aspect of the testimony, and the effort, through the queries, to measure in a rough way the degree to which Friends are actually testifying. One can see the difference by putting a testimony in these two ways:

"Do Friends love their Negro brothers?"

"Are Friends clear of slave-holding?"

There is a precision about action which is lacking in attitude, for the purpose of corporate soul-searching. It was, after all, for the purpose of corporate soul-searching that the queries were designed, with the answers being sent up to Yearly Meeting for its disciplinary action.

Their original purpose has been all but lost sight of, and the queries function now as a ritualistic Quaker equivalent of the Ten Commandments. As with the Commandments, the queries do not gain in effect with repetition, and if Friends really want their faces splashed with the cold water of ethical challenge, we should recommend that the queries be rephrased in blunt modern language.

Language is always a problem in religious circles, and we are not exceptions. Early Friends did call a spade a spade, and a church a steeple house. We wonder whether the very word "testimony" gets in the way of challenge by connoting some quaintness which individuals can take or leave.

We should preface our examination of the testimonies with the caution that we speak out of somewhat limited experience, and are bereft of scientific studies which would reveal what the state of the testimonies actually is. Our comments are, therefore, impressionistic. We enlist the reader in our effort to be severely honest, and hope that he will not be so interested in defending his image in our Society that he will refuse to examine objectively the state of the testimonies in his own Meeting and among his acquaintances.

(to be continued)

Quakerism: a view from the back benches continued

2007-02-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Towards Unity

Something has been said above about the need for a daring reappraisal of what membership in the Society of Friends means to members. Here we will probe the question of what membership requires. At present, we believe that most Meetings ( the few exceptions being barley adequate to prove the rule ) have no requirements for membership other than some accepted patterns of application, visitation and the like. It is safe to say that denials on any basis are rare, and more likely to occur on grounds other than the applicants religious conviction or position on Quaker testimonies. To press the point further, we can say there is at present an unwillingness among Friends to deal with these matters with prospective members, because to attempt this would necessitate the Meeting undertaking to arrive at unity on these thorny questions in the first place.

We maintain that Friends must do just that if they care about their Meetings communities. That is, they must (1) seek unity on what the requirements of membership should be, in a series of called special meetings to thresh out the matter, (2) apply these requirements to themselves, and (3) use them in the examination and acceptance of new members. Open now to the cries of wounded sensitivities regarding loss of freedom, we take shelter beside (critics may say "behind") George Fox, who did outline stringent requirements for adherents to the Light, and in whose time Quakerism was at its most potent and vital. If Friends cling to their faith that truth can be revealed to the faithful searcher, they need not fear to undertake the search, no matter how long and arduous it may be. The result may be a minimal definition. Conversely, who among us can say that a search undertaken in love and patience will not reveal to us a new requirement, not presently known to us singly?

Supposing that unity has been found on requirements of membership, but frankness compels us to admit that some members have more light on certain testimonies than others. Can we then submit ourselves to discipline by the corporate body, employing a new form of the historic Quaker practice of "eldering?" Can we redefine this proactive to remove the modern connotation of reprimand, expand it beyond the current meaning of controlling disruptive ministry in worship, and coin a new term which would carry the concept of mutual sharing of insight to achieve unity? We might call it "insight sharing" or "mutualizing." The reader who is interested in this suggestion will no doubt devise a more apt term.

This practice used today - as in Quaker history - would ask members to share their clarity on various testimonies with their fellow members. For example, if a Meeting has reached a corporate decision that a modern requirement of the testimony on brotherhood is a willingness to sell one’s house to a Negro, a Friend who feels clear on this testimony will be asked to labor with one who is not; he will be speaking for the corporate body, drawing on his own revelation in the matter, and strengthened by the knowledge that he is advancing he Meeting’s work.. Under this practice, this same Friend may find himself unclear on another of the testimonies united on by the Meeting and thus be the object of the Meeting’s concern and attention. Hence, the "mutual" aspect of this practice historically known as eldering may bring it up to the present day.

Having come through this task, the Meeting may then be free to communicate its requirements to prospective embers and to set up certain programs to help attenders make considered decisions regarding their relation to the Society. For example, a systematic course of study can be offered, responsibilities outlined, readiness for membership reasonably assessed by the applicant as well as the Meeting. This will help avoid resignations based on an original misunderstanding of what " a Quaker" is.

What safeguard in this arduous procedure against the dreaded dogmatic, creedal system? It is, again built into the Quaker method of arriving at decisions. Functioning properly, Friends can bring out all differences, all points of view on a problem and gain not just consensus, but Truth. We must accept the fact that perception of Truth may divide as well as unite us as a Meeting. If it unties us, it will strengthen us; if it splits us, we should have the courage to follow where the Truth leads us.

The suggestions set forth here as ways to vitalize community in the Society of Friends are not offered as brand new, heretofore-unthought-of techniques. Concerned Friends have no doubt ruminated over these and other, even better, ideas time and time again. The only possible novelty here is that we openly propose that Meetings test these ideas by use, with no guarantees of absolute success; but with insurance against absolute failure resting in the inevitable enlargement of self-knowledge, deeper awareness of others, and exercise of faith in the Light by which we seek to find the way.

(to be continued)

Quakerism: a view from the back benches - continued

2007-02-02T06:05:00.000-08:00

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

Caring and Sharing

The smaller, closer Meeting automatically presents the question of how best to share the burdens of troubled members. Aside from the normal troubles and sorrows which beset each of us from time to time, Quakerism seems to attract a number of people with real emotional disturbances and mental illnesses. How can a Meeting support these members without being sapped and fractured by the sometimes almost overwhelming burden?

The first commitment must be in our attitude toward the Meeting. To do anything at all, we must first be willing to assign to the Meeting a vital role as a primary in-group to which each member can relate for love and security, second only, perhaps, to the family.

As a primary in-group the Meeting becomes a major focus of life for its members for the length of time that it exists; and it must devise ways to respond creatively and constructively to the needs of individuals. To survive under the weight of these needs, we believe the Meeting must supply a warm, supportive atmosphere, responsive to troubled members but determined to share collective joys as well as miseries. While being sensitive and tender, the atmosphere must be in some degree buoyant, joyous, making use of the great store of gentle humor to be found among Friends.

While caring for its emotionally disturbed members, the Meeting which allows these members constantly to use is time together, whether it be worship, business or social, for personal therapy is headed for trouble, is not likely to help the member in trouble, and is liable to a feeling of being put-upon. The Meeting should know its limitations in this regard and stand ready to guide members to professional help when indicated, either from within or without the Meeting membership.

A Meeting which provides an emotional tie will be the natural place for bringing matters for advice which are now called “personal” - job changes, school choices, marital difficulties. The ultimate step in the relationship between a member and his Meeting comes when the member moves away; consequently, such a move will be a matter of weighty consideration by the member, consulting with the Meeting.

Another facet of the “caring” responsibility of Meetings is the frequent need to free individual members who have a clear leading to act on a concern. The Meeting should be ready and willing to meet the practical needs of a Friend and his family who is under the weight of a Quaker concern, but whose practical necessities may make it impossible for him to give time and full attention to carrying out such a concern.

( to be continued)

Quakerism: a view from the back benches continued

2007-02-01T05:16:00.000-08:00

Copyright 1966 The Back Benches
The Size of the Meeting

Experience leads us to the conclusion that the number of people attempting to create a religious community is the determining factor in success. The large, urban Meeting, while offering an intricate, often well-functioning organization with something for everyone, is not the breeding ground for total commitment of its members. It is true that individuals can commit themselves to work in such a Meeting, but the prospect is that they will limit their activities to certain compartments within the Meeting. This may be satisfying to individuals in the short run but, in the long run, may be destructive of the possibilities for corporate activity and growth.

Many members of large Meetings recognize this problem yet resist addressing themselves to a solution. Tradition, the care of a much-loved meeting house, a graveyard, a school, an old people’s home, etc., still the voices of those who might otherwise face up to the need for experimentation in size. The effect of Meeting property on the Quaker religious life is dealt with in another chapter. Here, we will only state that large holdings of property can crush the vitality of a Meeting’s active workers, frighten them in rigidity concerning change.
Large urban Meetings need to face squarely the need for growth-by-division. Ideas of what constitutes the correct size may vary; if a large urban Meeting were to multiply into a series of House Meetings, 15 to 30 adults might be a good number. Rotation of the place of Meeting (homes) would not unduly burden members; and finances would relate directly to the concerns of the Meeting and contributions might be more cheerfully given than is often the case in large membership organizations.

Leaving the newly constituted “House Quakers” for the moment, let us consider the problems of the too-small Meeting. It is safe to say that American Quakerism boasts many Meetings with too few members valiantly struggling to keep the Meeting alive in order to preserve a tradition, a lovely old meeting house, and so forth. Respecting these motivations as admirable and intensely human, we yet feel tender toward the admirable and intensely human, we yet may feel tender toward the needs of the Friends who so labor, and we question whether these burdens allow for the fullest participation in the wider and deeper Quaker experience.
An attempt by these members of identify what is of real value to them in these small, struggling Meetings and sift out what is merely burden may be of help. Perhaps the real essence, for example, will be found to be a meaningful worship, or a regular fellowship supper, or a children’s educational activity. This valued activity might be made vital by dispensing with all else in the Meeting’s life.

Perhaps, finally, the solution would be to lay down the Meeting or to join with another neighboring Meeting which shares many of the same difficulties of survival. The test would be whether by such experiments release and renewal are found by members, giving rise to fuller participation in Friendly concerns, and a more productive worship experience for all.
Perhaps small Meetings might spring up around a specific concern, such as a mental hospital, prison, peace effort, etc., so that the life a the Meeting would be focused on one area, at least for a time, all members giving and gaining spiritual sustenance through this unity of concern. If such a Meeting is later laid down, Friends are cautioned not to mourn its passing but to rejoice in the quality of service and spirit which it possessed while it was alive.

In smaller, closer Meetings, there is more possibility for experiment in new forms of communication, such as music, drama, the dance, and common work. New adjuncts to worship could be developed, predicated on the theory that silence is not sacrosanct, having no inherent life or value of its own, but is made meaningful by those who share it.

Experimentation with new ways of creating a silence alive with communicated truth should not be considered heretical so long as the effort is serious, focused on a goal, flexible, and above all fruitful.
(to be continued)

Quakerism: a view from the back benches

2007-01-31T08:35:00.000-08:00

An Introduction to a conversation about Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Though I was a child when this pamphlet came to our Meeting I remember the huge impact. Over the years, I have taken it down from the shelf and reread it, amazed at how the observations and issues remain mostly timely. I am posting this to my blog in short installments, in hopes that we might continue the conversation begun in 1966. For the most part the writing is as alive today as when these words were new. However, one will find male pronouns, outdated words such as “Negro” and I hope we might discuss those aspects of the writing which are important to our progress towards love in our meetings rather than dwelling on some of the outdated language. For younger Friends, remember the world in which this was written. America still had legal codes which enforced apartheid, selling one’s home to a Black person was not only illegal in some states, but could and did result in White Americans being charged with sedition.
I have been and am seeking surviving members of the original group. So far, I have been hearing back with sorrow, of the passing of these Friends. I hope if there are Friends in contact with members the original group they might put them in contact with me, for their permission to post their work here. I think, in the intention of the original work, that the authors might have been pleased by the blog format, the idea that we can enter their conversation over a distance, and more importantly, that we might take these thoughts to Friends in our own Meeting communities, and worship together and discuss the issues raised in the pages of this important reflection on Quakerism.
So, I hope Friends will fill the comments pages with new and vital commentary, in loving thanks to those Friends who began this conversation back in 1966. So, let us hold dearly in the light, those Friends, Cynthia Arvio, Raymond Paavo Arvio, Fred Bunker Davis, Dorothy Flanagan, Ross Flanagan, George Lakey, Vonna Taylor and William Taylor.
In frith and fFriendship
Lorcan Otway

Quakerism: a view from the back benches
Copyright 1966 The Back Benches

INTRODUCTION
TO FRIENDS WITH LOVE

More than a year ago the writers of this pamphlet came together to explore our feelings about the Society of Friends. Though we came from different Meetings - and of a widely differing character - for each of us the Society had been a religious home. Not one of us felt he could find as real a home in another fellowship, yet each of us in his own way had been deeply troubled by the condition of the Society today: its divisions, its confusions, its lack of witness and lack of light for the future. That others share this feeling is shown by the articles on religious renewal which appear often in Friends’ publications and by the emergence of groups seeking spiritual clarity and new purpose for the Society - all symptoms of striving and desire for change.
We started our discussions in a pervasive attitude of frustration and near-despair, a sort of “last- chance” atmosphere. Each of us shared a dilemma: involvement and yet dissatisfaction with our Meeting. We asked the questions: What are we called to do with our time, energies, and talents- limited as they are? Can new life grow within our Meetings? Can they become instruments of new life in the world?
As almost anyone could have told us, we have not found the answers to the questions we posed. These essays are the fruit of our sessions of searching, our doubts and affirmations. We hope that our writings show that we care for the Society of Friends and that they reflect the means which Quakerism has had for us. They are meant as a spur for debate; they are unfinished papers for each person to complete in his own way.
Though our discussions encompassed the Society in all its aspects, which really cannot be neatly separated and categorized for formal reasons we have written separate critiques of the Meeting as a community; Friends’ testimonies; worship; Friends’ form of organization, the meeting for business, and our attitudes toward conflict and controversy within the Meeting.
We have met five times as a group, each time becoming more aware of each other as individuals and of our differences. Through laboring together on this job, we have caught a glimpse of the answer to a question we didn’t come together to ask: how does a real feeling of unity arise? It is by working together on something of real importance to us, drawing upon intellect, emotion, patience, humor and worship. We have experienced part of the fruits of our labor in the very act of meeting together: a feeling of what is meant by the “blessed community” which is invisible and geographically dispersed, but nevertheless real.
For all Friends who find there life in the Society of Friends less than complete and fulfilling, we recommend this kind of group searching. While it may not yield the “new life” we seek, it may at least prepare the earth and plant some seeds so that new life may grow.

Cynthia Arvio, Raymond Paavo Arvio, Fred Bunker Davis, Dorothy Flanagan, Ross Flanagan, George Lakey, Vonna Taylor and William Taylor

June 1966
With special thanks for the help of Berit Lakey, and with appreciation to Jan Rachel, Sarah, Leslie, and Heikki Arvio, Christopher and Beth Flanagan, Christiana Lakey and Mark, Scott, Lynn and Melissa Taylor.

Chapter I
THE BLESSED COMMUNITY:
What are we mything?
We believe that many of the ills of Quakerism today are reflected in the breakdown of sharing and caring among the members. Or is it better to say that the lack of community, which we deeply feel, has caused the ills of the Society?
Obviously, we are faced with a chicken-egg situation in which cause and effect may seem hopelessly blurred. Laying aside Quaker prudence for the nonce, we here cast our lot with the chicken, and say that we believe that the drying-up of community in the Society of Friends is cause by the lack of common purpose among members and a fantastically wide variety of attitudes on what it means to be a Quaker. Hence, if I believe that my Quakerism means that, as a respected member of the middle class, I prefer to reflect my Christianity on Sunday morning in silence rather than genuflection, I can hardly be expected to communicate will with you, if you insist that your Quakerism has required you to break a law for conscience’s sake and spend the night in jail. We may be expected to sit in silence together for an hour, but can we be expected truly to share that brief experience, let alone our very lives the rest of the week? Can I be expected to wear my Quaker habit comfortably when your witness has branded all Quakers in our town as civil-disobedient? And do I detect an accusation of weakness in your Sunday morning hand-shake? How can we live together in the Society, loving, sharing, communicating, when the Light of Truth reveals to us such different requirements for our lives?
The Quaker belief that God can reveal his will directly to each of us if we can but learn to listen is the undergirding of our religious faith. Paradoxically, the belief poses for us a dilemma of staggering proportions. How can we dwell together in love and community when we are free to follow divergent paths?
We believe that there are some practical devices which- if we care enough- we can diligently employ to open the way for a recreation of a beloved community in our Society, in our various Monthly Meetings.

(To be continued)

To Be Frith and Friends

2007-01-27T03:19:00.000-08:00

Frith

This week I was cleaning my wee Trawler model, Frith. Oh, decades ago, I wanted to name a daughter Frith, Genie hated the name, and we never had kids anyway, so the name was carved onto the headboards of the Lowestoff Trawler I built in my second year of law school, to be sailed in Central Park... back before things got busy and I stopped hauling my boats up to that place.

I was thinking about the many concepts we seem to be loosing as our culture slips, as has been the pattern of all human cultures, from the complex to the simple. As we loose words we loose depth in linguistic concept. One root of our word Friend, dear fellow Quakers, is Frith.
By the alter in churches in the middle ages, was often found the Frithstool. A place of sanctuary for those in peril. What a dear idea, that we should be a sanctuary to each other.

The word Freedom, often found in the early expressions of our faith, also derives from Frith. Friends were advised to hold fast to our liberty. In order to be present to God, we needed to be free of the restraints of tyranny. We needed to put idols behind us, to not be distracted from God in each other -- for the sake of liberty, freedom.

A Frith was also a wooded enclosure, the opposite of a Fell... a refugee, as well as a narrow arm of the sea, as in the Frith of Forth. There is a sense of embracing in this use of the word.
Well, it is so late it has become early. So, I will leave thee with this small addition to the sense of the word Friend.

My Brother and My God

2007-01-18T16:24:00.000-08:00

Well, I am not a Universalist. I find I cannot abide paganism, not the paganism of the friends who dance naked in the woods, but the paganism of idolitry.
I have been thinking deeply of Martin Buber's comments about not chasing after God, for the risk of worshiping idols we make, rather than living in God in the acceptance of the moment, and I think of the terrible dilemma presented by Christianity. I find my self saying to Christians with a capital "C," give me back my brother, when thee makes a God of him, thee looses the man as well as God," and they say, "Give us back our God he was never your brother." They tell us that we who say this man was our kin are led by some other idol, satan, and we are damned to say our brother, as a teacher is lost under the idol of thy God.
I think about what Rome was, before Yeshua, there was a Pontiff, there was a religion like Christianity in so many ways, the state as God, the man as perfect, and how that so offended Yeshua. The banality that was Rome, the terrible institution that was Rome, that conquered so many civilizations, some so much more civilized than Rome. And how, if this were any other historical study, rational people would see the Romanized God, in the Hebrew teacher. Jesus did not make the Pontiff or the Church of Rome or the Christian churches that rose up in protest against Rome. Rather, Rome made Christianity as a weapon against the teaching of the great and gentle rabbi Yeshua.
I don't reject Yeshua, called Jesus, the teacher, but I reject the perfection he would have found offensive. The idea that we have come to the perfect moment of completion, rather than the completion of being in the moment as we seek perfection has caused so much strife, so much heart ache ... so much of the evil of separation from God.
I can't give you your God at the expense of my brother, he taught much better than that.

What Would Alan Lomax Say...

2007-01-11T02:13:00.000-08:00

Well,... I have been witnessing the slow death of folk music, in many places, been on islands where old people played music from the 17th century and older, while old people danced equally ancient steps ... and now those islands young people play lounge lizard music, American pop, while old people do Texas line dancing. So what?
If you ask so what, you weren't there ... in places with long memories.

A pub in New York, called Puck Fair.

One of the finest novelists of today wrote a wonderful book, with great sense of the inside outlook of Romany people. He had a big party thrown at Puck Fair. The Gypsy Kings where playing, and he asked me to go home and get my guitar, to come back and play a song I had written, within the tradition of my singing ... so, at the break he asked me to go on stage and play. I did. A friend of mine, Antonio was playing with two members of the Gypsy Kings. I embraced them and greeted them in Vlax Romaness, and they embraced me in Gitano. I sat down, and a number of people in the pub, who had heard me before clapped. I tuned, arraigned the mics and motioned to the bar tender to turn off the CD ... loud rock and roll.

The owner came up and said that this was not an open session. I explained that Colum, the writer for whom the party was being thrown asked me to sing. He told me that the Gypsy Kings would walk out if he allowed me to sing. I told him that Gypsy people were not like that. He said, they were big stars, signed with a big label and I was a nobody, and it was rude of me not to have asked him first, if I might play.

What has become of our music? In my oh, too many years, I have played for many parties in pubs, I have opened for many big folk stars with big contracts with big labels. In past days, in folk music, it was understood that the Gypsy Kings are only the ones noticed by the pop culture, but that the folk tradition is the nobodies like myself, whose songs are often recorded by bigger bands, as mine have been ... we are the ones who are caught for free in field recordings and archived, as I have been ... we once were the people.

But, as Alan Lomax said of modern mass communication, it is a one-way conversation. Those with the money enough to own the media talk to the those who can afford the small price of the receiver. Such is not about communication, it is about silence, silence of the folk, most of us ... the voices of the people, most of whom are nobodies like myself.

I perform less and less, and see, very soon a day, when it is just too sad to get out on a stage.
And they have the nerve to call the pub, "Puck Fair," well, who could have been to the real Puck Fair and act like that? Damned if I know.

True Monotheism and Love

2007-01-07T02:56:00.000-08:00

The first commandments in the Hebrew Scriptures state that one is to believe in one God and not to worship idols. This is remarkably clear thinking. Once one accepts the unique totality of God, encompassing all the created, it is impossible to hate, to hold to alienation God's work and being in others. However, once one inserts the idol, the image of God, the person of God as separate and separately worshiped, one can alienate anyone else from the totality of love which is God. Even the setting aside of our theological founders and teachers as idols, can distract us from the love of others in God's love.
Friends who often quote Fox, or others as precedent for their beliefs, create in Fox, as in Yeshua, a block to the directness of personal openness to God, and as such, just as the Christian is called to explain or defend the contradictions in the political history that created Jesus the idol, from Yeshua the teacher, the Quaker fundamentalist (and in this some will argue the misapplication of the term "fundamentalist" as having specific rather than general meaning - I refer to the general meaning) must find a way to explain or justify those aspects of Fox's life which are at odds with what Quakerism has become. A brilliant and loving Friend recently wrote an insightful piece to explain Fox's stand on slavery, in light of what seems to many Friends to be a political accommodation to one of the most horrific sins against that singular love of God in each other, that was human bondage.
In this statement I am caught in a dilemma that has resulted in the destruction of pacifists for thousands of years. Order, and power demand idolatry, and therefore those who say that God is greater than the image, the order and power challenge that core concept of institutional faith, that inarguable element of discourse, that God is " ______ ", rather than the pacifist statement of love that "God is".
So, here we are, a few who say that we Quakers are bound to love, to forgive, reach out to each other ... to be present to God in each other, and are often shunned and even hated for this. Oh well ... just a few more late night thoughts.

Failing, falling, and landing on my feet...

2007-01-01T13:27:00.000-08:00

Yup... isn't it odd how whenever folks around me fall, they always land on my feet?

God is not my Security Blanket nor my Buddy

2006-12-29T17:17:00.000-08:00

Oh Friends. There is such a temptation to join the club ... to pretend that God loves thee as an individual, and that God has some kind of kind faced kid to hold thy hand... I don't think it is that easy. God loves, as we all love, in that God is in that which is that in us that loves, but some external father who will help when the world turns against thee ... if thee accepts that Yeshua was Jesus ... well, in order for me to believe that, I would have, not only to turn off that brain that God gave me, ignore the history of my mother's people, but allow myself to knowingly lie to myself, and frankly, I don't think that would cure what ails me.
Folks who should have been dear to me, my immediate family, have lied to me about love from the earliest of my memories, I have no close friends who have not betrayed my trust and friendship ... and so, I don't think that placing my faith in a mythical idol, the objectification of a remarkable rabbi, will replace that love that I deserved, as we all deserve. Not having had that love does not make me turn against God, because I don't kid myself to believe that myth is truth, rather myth describes truth, and pretty poorly at that.
So, I bear the pain of loneliness as long as I can ... muddle through, and that is that. I try to find joy in spite of the consciousness of pain and though I have lost hope, I don't loose faith.