"No longer will I be hungry...

Headline: "Vulnerable, powerful and
pure." Irish Daily Mail, July 27.
Source.

... for the bread of life is mine."

— Shuhada' Sadaqat (Sinéad O'Connor), 1966-2023, from the song "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got."

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"Vulnerable, powerful"—these words from the Irish Daily Mail headline following Shuhada' Sadaqat's death seem right to me. I wonder whether she herself might dispute the word "pure," but if you interpret it as "transparent," this word, too, seems right. As consistent as she was in some ways, and impulsive and self-contradictory in others, I never got the idea that she was withholding something from us.

It's hard to explain exactly why I found her work so engaging over these last three decades. Maybe it was her modesty, her ability not to be overawed by her own celebrity status, and even to risk that status altogether in service to her convictions.

Her anger (particularly in the notorious photo-ripping episode) also seemed right to me, given my own first-hand and second-hand exposure to abuse. For all these reasons, I loved listening to her voice, which seemed to ring out strong and pure at some moments, and trembled hesitantly at others, but was always believable.

I couldn't help wondering whether there was a tiny thread of Quaker influence in O'Connor's life, along with her love-hate relationship with the Catholic church, its institutions and its rebels, and along with her eventual decision to identify with Islam. She went to Newtown School in Waterford, Ireland ("Educating for life in the Quaker tradition since 1798," says their Web site) for part of her teenage years. However, with one major exception, her few passages about the school in her autobiography are not very positive. After trying more than once to get expelled, she finally left on her own without graduating.

That one major exception was her music teacher, Joe Falvey of Waterford Friends, "a glorious black-bearded music loving man" who had a friend with a recording studio. Apparently the appreciation was mutual—see his comments about his former student.

Most of the music I love is in two categories, blues and classical, and neither category exactly fits O'Connor's music. It simply made a space for itself in my brain. And I made a space for it in our classes in Russia. 

Those classes, especially my high school supplementary classes, often ended with a gap-fill exercise like this one. Often the choice of song was mine, but students were welcome to suggest songs, too, as long as the words could be heard clearly and wouldn't scandalize parents. For most of the years we were there, I included two songs by Sinéad O'Connor in the rotation. In both songs (but especially the first), I appreciated the severe clarity of her words. The contents of both songs also invited thoughtful discussion, in class and afterwards. Here they are embedded in posts published for our students:

"I Don't Want What I Haven't Got"

"Reason With Me"

As different as my life has been from hers, both of these songs evoke many of my own growing-up memories. And in my head I have a running fantasy dialogue with her about the reality of God and the unreality of so much of the religion industry. To sum up, I'm grateful to her for her amazing voice, her rough edges, her costly honesty, and her fertile provocations. I echo the words of actor Russell Crowe: "Peace be with your courageous heart Sinéad."

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Given O'Connor's complicated relationship with Catholicism, here's a wonderful review of her autobiography Rememberings in the Catholic magazine America.

Two interesting recent items from the University of Chicago's Martin E. Marty Center: "Redefining Redlining on Chicago's South Side"; and "Sightings and Sorrows of Religion: While religion should motivate efforts to alleviate hatred and dehumanization, it often finds itself wrapped up in these social evils."

Lessons from Jonathan Watts and Eliane Brum and their "tiny reforestation scheme in the Amazon."

Julika Luisa Enbergs interviews Greg Yudin on how Russians perceive the war.

With these [generational and income] disparities in mind, how fragile is the Russian Empire?

It's certainly a dying empire. You can see that because it basically offers nothing to the areas it wants to control. The only thing that is offers is the idea of bringing back the Soviet Union, which is basically a fantasy. There are no civilizational projects. That's what makes it totally unattractive for Ukrainians, and for other countries. And that's what makes it believe solely in force.

Micah Bales:  We seek an earth restored.

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Another of my favorite songs as performed by Sinéad O'Connor:

"The church is like a ..." (part two)

(part one)

From Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944); source.

Today I have three new words to introduce the concept of "church" to people without any experience of what a church can be: lifeboat, garden, and portico.

(Background: this is a follow-up to "The church is like a ..." back in May, where I presented comparisons to an incubator, laboratory, and observatory, and explained why I went in search of models in the first place. On Facebook, I was delighted to get several more interesting suggestions; the threads are here and here.)

Why "lifeboat"? The "boat" image came to me almost immediately -- probably because I was doing a lot of speaking and writing on Jesus on the stormy seas, Noah's ark, the ecumenical image of the church as a boat, and so on. Underneath all that, I was putting together the qualities of several other ideas -- particularly "hospital" and "sanctuary" -- but with the added emphasis that those in the lifeboat are trying to pull in others who are still in the water, but they're all, so to speak, in the same boat. They're risking everything in the belief that the boat is trustworthy. Those who pull at the oars don't just wait passively to help people -- they move toward the places of need.

I vividly remember one experience of a Friends meeting as a lifeboat -- even though that lifeboat came into my life years after the crisis had happened. During many of the years of domestic violence and family chaos that I've described in recent posts, our family was living on Maple Avenue in Evanston, between Crain and Greenleaf Streets. Less than a block away stood the Evanston Friends Meetinghouse, right on the corner of Maple and Greenleaf! Any mention of religion was forbidden in our family, so I never dared to satisfy my curiosity about that building. Another source of drama and tension in my family, Nichols Junior High School, was also just a block away from the meetinghouse.

Many years later, I was on the board of Right Sharing of World Resources, and it happened that one of our board meetings was hosted by Evanston Friends. On Sunday morning, we joined the community of Evanston Friends at their regular meeting for worship, right there at the corner of Maple and Greenleaf.

I settled into the silence and tried to center down, but my teenage years on Maple Avenue came back to me in the form of vivid memories. I tried to bring them to the foot of the Cross. What began happening inside me then felt like nothing less than spiritual surgery of the deepest and gentlest kind. I tried to give voice to what I was feeling, but I couldn't convey how much pain my sisters and I had gone through less than a block from that place, how much weight was being lifted from me that very morning -- and how much poison was being removed. I had read about "healing of memories," but that was my first experience of it.

---

"Garden" as a model for church came naturally as an extension of "incubator" and "seedbed." What I love about the garden image is not just the variety and lifespans of the plants involved -- the annuals, perennials, ancient trees, new seedlings, glorious flowers, deceptively drab but savory herbs, and even the greedy weeds. But look at all the people involved with gardens: from urban klutzes like me to dedicated amateurs and professionals, to admiring visitors of all ages and conditions.

In Russia, I sometimes helped my friend who had a dacha about half an hour's walk from her home, where she grew vegetables for the table, and flowers to sell for income and to give as gifts. In the summer of 1998, the water level was so low that we had to lower buckets by hand to get the last bits of water at the bottom of the well. I understood that this was not a game -- she and her family depended on canning the produce for part of their winter food supply. (Meanwhile, back home, stores of potatoes, carrots, and beets were under every bed and desk.)

Every detail of this picture mirrors the life of a church, from the earthiness of soil and worms -- engagement with the actual creation -- to the variety of life experiences in the community, to the presence or absence of Living Water and the willingness (to quote Fred Boots) to bring a bucket to the water rather than a teaspoon.

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Finally, the church as "portico" (or foyer, lobby, vestibule, whatever term you use for the place between the front gate and the working heart of the whole site).... This is actually my favorite of all these models. Maybe it is linked with Theresa of Avila and her "interior castle," and maybe it relates to the Eastern Orthodox understanding of the church at worship as heaven's living room on earth, but I actually have a specific anchor for this word. When I was a brand new Friend and a nervous newcomer to the realms of prayer, I came across Douglas Steere's book Dimensions of Prayer, and I was enormously helped by this passage:

... [I]n prayer, our first step is to remember, to be successfully awakened to the fact of deep reality encompassing us on every side, and to want to be drawn within its range of radiation. Prayer aims at both a recognition of, and a human response to, something of cosmic significance that is already going on in the universe. François de Sales expressed this very simply by telling those who would pray to begin by remembering into Whose Presence they were to come. And Francis of Assisi used the device of repeating over and over to himself at spaced intervals, "O my God, who art Thou? and Who am I?"

There is no hurry, however, about plunging into prayer. We may well linger in the portico to be awakened, to remember into Whose Presence we are about to come. If one of us were to be ushered into the presence of one of the great spirits of our time -- Albert Schweitzer, or Alan Paton, Vinoba Bhave, or Helen Keller -- we should be glad for a little time in the portico to collect ourselves, to adjust, not our clothing but our spirits, for meeting this one whose reputation we cherish. During this waiting period, we might well think of how this person had lived, of how he or she had spared nothing to give of himself to some great human cause, and of how drawn we were to have the blessings of conversing with him. If this time of recollection is precious preceding a visit to a contemporary, how much more suitable and necessary it is before coming into the presence of God.

Many other writers have helped me get closer to learning what a life of prayer might be all about. Among my favorites have been Brigid E. Herman, Thomas H. Green, Anthony Bloom, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, and Thomas Kelly. But those simple and reassuring paragraphs from Douglas Steere helped me get through the gate, from a background of ferocious anti-faith, to a place where my heart really wants to be.

Steere's image of a portico or foyer, where we can collect ourselves, maybe wipe our glasses or calm our beating heart, might sound like a device more intended for the individual approaching God, rather than a community. However, this might be a result of our not having the freedom we should have, as participants in a trustworthy church, to confess our fears and (apparent) failures, our breakthroughs, and our need for control. What if we all have these same hopes and fears? Then maybe we are in the portico together, ready to give up our control in the expectation that the very next step will be into God's heart.

PS: And if we don't all get the inner confirmation we yearned for this time, we will not lack for company when we gather ourselves up for another visit, unashamed because we are all equally loved, and equally welcome, whatever life has put in our way to make us doubt. We won't push you through the portico too quickly, but we also won't leave you behind.

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Why Kathleen Parker never had a chance to say goodbye. "Three funerals in a week sounds like a reductive movie title, but it applies."

A brief introduction to Canada's Doukhobors, thanks to BBC's Travel page. (Thanks to Tom Stave for the link.) I mildly dispute the author's statement that the Doukhobor story is "little-documented" but "little-known" is probably right. Here's a brief item on our own visit to Castlegar, British Columbia, eight years ago.

The Washington Post picked up this item about Friends Committee on National Legislation from Religion News Service.

Doug Bennett on critical race theory: a tale of two disciplines.

Pope Francis on the real threat to the church. (A homily on Galatians.)

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"She had pickpocket fingers and a Buster Keaton smile." James Harman and friends. (Talk about an atmospheric setting!)

The socialists are coming!!

I'm not much for labeling people,
but I have to make a living somehow. Source.

Among my friends and relatives, the supporters of Donald Trump's re-election as U.S. president have two top priorities.

Priority one is their opposition to abortion. I wrote last year about my own conflicted views on abortion (and added some thoughts more recently), but those who explain their support of Trump by saying "I’m voting for every unborn soul the Democrats want to murder," are probably not available for the conversations I advocated there.

Right now, in close second place, Trump supporters oppose the inevitable socialist apocalypse that would follow a Democratic victory in November. "Don't let the Socialist Democrats turn the USA into Venezuela," warns one popular graphic. Once again, the "socialist" label is being pressed into service, not in the service of a fair discussion, but as an epithet.

To be effective, this scare tactic requires us not to look too closely at what's behind that "socialist" label. We must believe that the democratic socialism of people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the same as the forms of socialism practiced in Venezuela and Cuba, for example, and that the factors that shaped those case studies would be present in the USA as well.

I can see why it would be tempting to encourage this confusion. Classic socialism -- government control of most or all markets for goods and services -- has a disastrous historical record. In theory, such a system would ensure that everyone gets their basic needs met, but the level of social control required to maintain these systems practically guarantees a descent into tyranny. For a preview of this tendency, look at the history of socialist and communist organizations. Only Protestant Christians rival them for the ability to quarrel and divide on doctrinal issues. If we just take the scare tactics at face value and assume that Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are hell-bent on creating that sort of system, we can be excused for fearing the consequences.

(For a fictional attempt at a spiritual x-ray of late-stage Soviet socialism, read Francis Spufford's novel Red Plenty, which I summarized here as "the most unusual book I've ever read about the Soviet Union.")

Democratic socialism shares the same major goal as classic socialism: eliminating the social and economic causes of suffering. Eliminating preventable suffering is also a major ethical priority of Christianity, which is probably why so many socialist thinkers have been Christians. For example, Canada's democratic socialist political party, the New Democratic Party, included Christian politicians such as J.S. Woodsworth and Stanley Knowles among its formative leaders. The Roman Catholic Church's social teachings helped form the modern labor movement in many countries. Prominent Christian socialists in the USA's history include Norman Thomas, Dorothy Day, A.J. Muste, Kirby Page, and Mother Jones. This history, if better known, might go a long way to correcting the impressions left by the celebrity Christians of the far right.

Democratic socialism recognizes that there is no way to impose this laudable goal of eliminating preventable suffering from the top down. Coercive centralized planning, no matter how elegantly organized or diligently practiced (see Red Plenty), involves a monopoly on power, and we humans have a terrible record with unchecked power. Democratic socialists rely on two major devices to keep power in check -- a system of political checks and balances, and a market economy. Strangely enough, these are the same mechanisms favored by conservatives! 

The mission of democratic socialists is simple and twofold:

First, they advocate and evangelize for their central vision: a good society ensures fair access to the community's resources so that nobody suffers needlessly.

Second, they compete in the political marketplace of ideas and policies, engaging with colleagues and opponents to find the right balance between two competing goods: building up enough resources for the community's social goals, while providing for reasonable incentives for the private marketplace to thrive and the hybrids (public utilities and other public/private joint ventures) to reward investors.

This is where conflicts often arise: advocates for the most generous social policies can collide with those who want to maximize entrepreneurial and investor incentives. The more we challenge each other to keep our shared values of social justice at the center, the more fruitful (my optimistic self says) these conflicts can be, and the more we can expose the hidden motives of greed and class interest that are in direct conflict with everyone (progressive and conservative alike) whose goal is fair access to resources and the elimination of needless suffering.

Democratic socialists propose solutions that analyze the division of labor between government management and the free market, and adjust that division in favor of our most vulnerable people. For all activities that are best regulated by the free market -- the vast majority of industries and services -- there may be no role for government beyond the preservation of public safety and mechanisms for resolving disputes. But for those activities that are basic to everyone's health and safety, such as police and fire services, roads, every-address postal service, guaranteed access to education, and (I would argue) health care, accountable government management makes sense. The free market simply does not know how to weigh private incentives and the public good in such large-scale concerns, though many will pretend (for their private benefit) that any alternative to the market is (scary music) socialism!

Improving this division of labor -- making better choices between what the free market does well, and what an elected government can accomplish -- is the actual conversation proposed by actual democratic socialists. Every democratic country in the world has already arrived at some such division of labor, including the USA, although nobody has done a perfect job. How can we in the USA do a better job together to "promote the General Welfare" and eliminate needless suffering? And ... really, does this urgent conversation sound so apocalyptic?

............................

In thinking about this theme, I found a couple of interesting articles.

On Wikipedia, "Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor."

And on Norway as a case study of democratic socialism, "Scandinavian Socialism: The 'Truth' of the Nordic Model."

On this site you can find one of Truman's more famous pieces of rhetoric, on the use of the word "socialism" by politicians on the Republican side. Here he is in Syracuse, New York, on October 10, 1952: 

Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

Socialism is what they called public power. 

Socialism is what they called social security.  

Socialism is what they called farm price supports. 

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. 

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

More labels: evangelical, conservative, radical.

............................

To call Jesus a socialist might be a suspicious use of religious rhetoric for political gain, but let's look with pure motives at how Wess Daniels describes the biblical evidence of the Savior's priorities: Jesus against empire.

Church during "lockdown" and a "hiddenness of life and worship...."

A sad anniversary: Samantha Smith and the Soviet Union.

............................

UPDATE on the Ramallah Friends Schools:

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the pandemic-era situations faced by several Friends schools. I've also been wondering how Ramallah Friends School in Palestine has been doing. Yesterday I got an update from Adrian Moody, director of the School:

We are currently preparing for a return to school on the 7th September. Cases in the Westbank are going up around 600 per day. We know if we get a case here at school then we will have to close again so things are really uncertain. We have to prepare whilst the goal posts are constantly moving.

The pandemic has really hit school finances. Shop owners were severely hit with all the closures but civil servants were also hit because salaries were cut up to 60%, A lot of our parents are struggling to pay their fees and have to pay for the last academic year as well as prepare for the new academic year. We do what we can to help and we have opened up applications for financial aid and fortunately were able to raise some emergency funds through donors to help our most affected parents.

The financial situation on the Westbank has been dire for some time and the pandemic has just made it incredibly difficult. We are in for a tough year.

To make a contribution to Ramallah Friends School and their resources for financial aid, visit the School's online donation page. To participate in Friends United Meeting's support for the School, visit FUM's donation page. 

............................

Enjoy Sue Foley breaking down the blues guitar for us:

"You call me and I'll go"

Source.  

About an hour ago, as I write these words, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) arrived in Cuba. Tomorrow he's scheduled to meet with the bishop of Rome, Pope Francis, in a room at José Martí International Airport. Kirill and Francis are expected to spend a substantial part of their time in private and unscripted talks centering, at least initially, around the difficult situation of Christians of all confessions in the greater Middle East.

The spark for this meeting may have come from Francis, who told reporters back in November 2014 that he had promised Kirill, "I'll go wherever you want. You call me and I'll go." When they and their staffs realized that Kirill's plans to visit South America and Francis's plans to visit Mexico meant that their paths could cross in Havana, a plan emerged ... although exactly when it emerged (revealed only a week ago) isn't clear.

What is clear: this is a historic meeting. The Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) is the largest section of the global Eastern Orthodox family, and its head has never even once met with the head of the Roman Catholic Church in all the centuries their constituencies have been on this planet together. Instead, Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches, often allied with secular rulers, have poached from each other's flocks and properties over the centuries. Any number of historians from each side can tell you exactly why the other side is the main culprit. And the current conflicts in Ukraine have added to these grievances.

Do we Quakers have a stake in this meeting? After all, aren't we supposed to be a radical departure from the male-dominated, authoritarian, ceremonial cultures that the Catholic and Orthodox both seem to represent? (Are any of us ever likely to get the kind of reception from the President of Cuba that Kirill received today?) Why should we care?

• First of all, we've been asked to care. As fellow believers, we've been asked by both Francis and Kirill to pray "fervently" for the success of these meetings. Maybe that should be enough right there.
• Second, many of our neighbors are in these men's pastoral care. Even for those of us outside their jurisdiction, that ought to give some weight to their meeting tomorrow, and to their request for our prayer. A successful meeting could be a direct blessing to many millions of members of the body of Christ, including countless thousands who are trying to carry their cross in areas of crisis where we Friends are few and far between.
• Finally, whatever we think of the advantages and defects of their organizations, these men are in positions of leadership and influence. Caution and rigidity can be found in the middle management of both hierarchies. However we feel about the power and influence they wield or ought to wield, Francis and Kirill are just men, and are just as much in need of Holy Spirit guidance as any of us. Let's pray that the freedom that Francis had in saying "you call me and I'll go" will still be in the air as they meet.
• Friday addition: I affirm Friends' distinctives in upholding a low-overhead vision of church, but we are not without our own myths about ourselves! 

Some Kirill-Francis-Havana links:

Russian sources.
A Ukrainian Catholic take.
National Catholic Reporter.
America: The National Catholic Review.
Cardinal Koch (Vatican Radio).
The cynics' version.

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Nazi oppression and the cruelties of world war created some miraculous meetings of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant disciples at the grassroots. In his talk, "Beyond Fear: The Therapeutic Role of Saints," Jim Forest reminds us of two examples: Mother Maria Skobtsova ("the one Orthodox saint of modern times who is on the calendar of the Catholic Church in France") and the White Rose resistance group in Germany.

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Source.  

Today's other big news: an interdisciplinary (and likely interconfessional as well!) team known as the LIGO Scientific Collaboration announced that their equipment apparently detected the gravitational waves that Albert Einstein predicted but doubted would ever be found. If verified, LIGO methods will open up incredible new possibilities for astronomy and cosmology, helping us to investigate space-time beyond current limitations of visibility, distance, and even primordial time.

The Internet is happily swamped with reports of today's announcement, accompanied by many creative attempts to explain things to nonscientists like me. Here is one from space.com. I'd love to think that humanity would take a moment to share these scientists' delight and put our earthly squabbles into perspective.

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Seems well-timed in light of LIGO: George Fox Evangelical Seminary is organizing a seminar in the planetarium at Portland, Oregon's outstanding science museum, OMSI, on February 19: "In Love with God's Two Books: Coming to Faith and Wonder through Scripture and Science." (Thanks to Paul Almquist for the link.)

"Creation waits with eager longing..." Epistle of the 2016 World Plenary of the Friends World Committee for Consultation.

Quaker Voluntary Service invites applicants to serve in the 2017-2017 program year.

Ian Paul: Can the Church of England 'agree to disagree' on sexuality without becoming theologically incoherent?

Another grim week for the civil-society sector in Russia: Internet defenders. Agora. Golos. (Golos background.)

My first contributions to Atlas Obscura: Gennett Walk of Fame. Levi Coffin House.

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Even if you're a pope or a patriarch ... when the Lord gets ready, you've got to move.

Francis' hooks

Source.

But first ....  Arriving home today from my visits to Friends House Moscow and the Baptist seminary nearby, I eagerly went to my desk to check the news. What did Pope Francis tell the U.S. Congress? Have European leaders made progress in addressing the refugee crisis?

Instead, on the BBC Web site, devastating news from Saudi Arabia: "'Dead bodies stretch as far as my eyes can see,' said Bashir Sa'ad Abdullahi, the BBC's Abuja editor, who is in Mina."

I'm filled with grief for those people of all ages, who met their end while engaging in an act of devotion to their faith. I hope we can pause to honor that devotion, and those men, women, children, whose time with us came to an end in the midst of that act.

My prayers are also for those who have stewardship of these holy sites and who must now answer for the adequacy of the Hajj arrangements, and for those who are ministering to the grieving families. Finally, I can't help hoping that this awful disaster can interrupt the hate-mongering and enemy-imaging that we sometimes call Islamophobia. Look! -- these too are fragile human beings loved by the same God who loves you and me.

Update: Saudi king orders safety review.

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What did Francis tell Congress?

You can find transcripts and competent summaries in many places, so just let me give one reflection based on a hope that I expressed in these words at the time he was elected Pope:

It's a mysterious and (hopefully) fertile anomaly that the titular head of a Christian confession automatically becomes a world leader, entitled to visibility and influence in an otherwise severely secular and often ruthlessly pragmatic circle. By design, Providence, or both, John Paul II became a hugely important figure on the global stage in his own time. He created and exploited disequilibrium in Eastern Europe on a mass scale. What I hope for Francis is that he will create and exploit disequilibrium in a more specific realm: the "world leaders" themselves, in how they envision leadership, the image of leader, the "God-bearing" quality inherent in spiritually grounded leadership. By helping them, consciously or unconsciously, "confront the gap between their espoused values and lived values," he might help accomplish a shift that is just as important as adoption of this or that policy. ("Simon and Francis.")

So far, Francis has not disappointed me. Today he used his unusual moment of visibility to address his audience as a teacher. He spoke directly to the important people gathered in the House chamber and told them (1) what their jobs really are, and (2) what the stakes are. He did it winsomely, with a measured amount of flattery for his host country, but without platitudes.

People who define themselves as important can often shrug off the wisdom of a teacher. My hope is that, by providing such an eloquent and substantial lesson before the whole world, full of deft rhetorical hooks, Francis has equipped us to keep reminding our elected servants that "the yardstick we use for others will be the yardstick which time will use for us." And again: "We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place." And not least, a simple but powerful reminder: "We need to avoid a common temptation nowadays: to discard whatever proves troublesome."

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James Carroll describes his own experience of "when popes confront the political world."

Stephen Colbert and Paul Ricoeur?

Changing the face of American Jesus.

3.5 million words later, this Quaker taxation economist is finally getting listened to (and sometimes credited). (Thanks to quakerquaker.org for the link.)

The problem of the resurrection of the wicked.

A rare thing: a newly published recording of Vladimir Vysotsky from 1979.

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All Cedric Burnside knows:


Cedric Burnside "All I Know", acoustic performance from Koffler Pictures on Vimeo.

Prophets, cynics, and tricksters

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine and I were discussing a couple of well-known Russian Christian activists. One of them is Orthodox and the other is Baptist. Both are known for their willingness to be controversial.

My friend had some doubts about the efficacy of aggressive activism. He said, look how far the new Protestant mayor of Togliatti, Russia, is getting with his quiet, non-confrontational approach.

As usual, I don't like to have to choose between apparent opposites. Many gifts are represented in the Body of Christ, and their practitioners are sometimes likely to get on each others' nerves. One of the first prophets I ran into among Friends often seemed to find herself quite alone at meetings for business. When the Baptist guy I'm referring to here gets his rhetoric going, you can almost sense people running for cover, but I absolutely admire his ability to point out the biblical signs of the times.

So we have the sensible administrator over here; and over there we have the prophet who rushes in where angels and fools alike fear to tread. Shouldn't they be in conversation with each other, and with the rest of us?

Source.

The day after my friend and I had this discussion, I saw a one-line news item online that went something like this: artist nails scrotum to Red Square. Instantly I knew it could only be Pyotr Pavlensky. Earlier this year, he had appeared, naked and wrapped in barbed wire, in front of a government building in St. Petersburg. Last year he sewed his mouth shut and stood in front of St. Petersburg's Kazan Cathedral, holding a sign that read, "Pussy Riot's appearance was a replaying of JESUS CHRIST'S famous action (Matthew 21:12-13)." (Photos here. All three actions summarized here.)

Honestly, I was deeply moved by this latest act. I find it impossible to analyze Pavlensky dispassionately, either in terms of art or politics--and I'm not competent to venture into the territory of psychology. In purely human terms, I'm just very impressed with his willingness to confront Goliath, and not Goliath only, but all of us who are chattering away fully clothed on the sidelines and betting that Goliath will win once again.

Don't assume, by the way, that you know who I mean by "Goliath." It's a system, not a person. In the slow-motion drama that is Russia today, and maybe the world as a whole, every human being, and certainly every politician, is playing a role. There are few, if any, total devils or total angels, as inconvenient as that fact might be for those who like to choose sides. We vary only in our degree of captivity or (as I see it in Christian terms) our choosing to accept and proclaim freedom in stubborn solidarity with our neighbors--and then working out through honest dialogue what that really means.

Well, I think it is worth thinking about, anyway. And my thinking recently has been fed by several helpful articles on cynicism in Russia, collected on the site openDemocracy.net. I found "The indiscreet charm of the Russian cynic" especially interesting, in light of Pussy Riot and Pyotr Pavlensky--and in the continuing ability of just about everyone I know to adopt the persona that they need to get through the next routine encounter with power. Without romanticizing a risky path that could lead to perverse self-gratification rather than social blessing, I can't help wondering whether these new tricksters might be provoking a whole new conversation beyond the conventional tugs-of-war of today's conventional politics.

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In my first blog post about Pope Francis, I said that John Paul II created and exploited disequilibrium in world politics, and I hoped that Francis would create and exploit disequilibrium in the very nature and understanding of world leadership. It was interesting to see a tiny confirmation of this disequilibrium in what Russian Orthodox protodeacon Andrei Kuraev said about Pussy Riot convict Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's complaints about prison conditions, and about patriarchal representative Vsevolod Chaplin's response (convicts who go to prison for a crime shouldn't expect a resort). From Geraldine Fagan's article, "Russia's spinning moral compass," at openDemocracy.net,

Protodeacon Kurayev’s quite different reaction to Tolokonnikova’s appeal highlights how deep the Church rift over politics has become. ‘Before us is a situation straight from the Gospels – a person is crying in pain, asking for help… Should we make faces and say, ‘No, no, no, until we see an expert analysis in triplicate and officially stamped saying there really are violations and problems there, we won’t waste our compassion’?’

Imagine if such a letter lay on the desk of Pope Francis, asked Kurayev. Would his reaction be the same as Fr Vsevolod Chaplin’s? ‘I don’t think so.’ For the protodeacon, the stakes of clerical support for the regime in the new Putin era could not be higher. ‘This is already a question of the honour of our Church.’

(Here in Russian is Kuraev's original blog post.)

Continuing the theme of cynicism and freedom: Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's correspondence with Slavoj Žižek.

More on Francis and the Christian antidote to cynicism: "Why even atheists should be praying for Pope Francis." There's a massive public response to Francis, which should tell us something very significant about the widespread hunger for Christian consistency.

Just one more item! "Confessions of a recovering cynic."

To celebrate the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: Garry Wills, "The Words that Remade America."

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See this movie--if for no other reason than to hear the story of Percy Sledge and "When a Man Loves a Woman." But there's so much more!

Organizational mortality

Source.

Among many fertile ideas, the most powerful statement for me in Pope Francis' recent interview in the Catholic magazine America is this:

We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.

There's something perversely hopeful in this humble audacity, this warning that the "edifice" is not in a state of guaranteed impunity or immortality. Earlier in the interview, he gave a related warning about what "losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel" in favor of protecting privilege looks like:

This church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people. We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity.

And he hints at the kind of relationships, priorities, and ministries that go with building a "home for all" by referring to history (the Salesian missionaries who went to Patagonia), his own recent experience (his "act of generativity" in phoning the young man who sent him a letter), and the importance of the youngest churches:

The young Catholic churches, as they grow, develop a synthesis of faith, culture and life, and so it is a synthesis different from the one developed by the ancient churches. For me, the relationship between the ancient Catholic churches and the young ones is similar to the relationship between young and elderly people in a society. They build the future, the young ones with their strength and the others with their wisdom. You always run some risks, of course. The younger churches are likely to feel self-sufficient; the ancient ones are likely to want to impose on the younger churches their cultural models. But we build the future together.

The Roman Catholic Church worldwide, with its billion adherents, operates on a very different scale from us Friends. (Someone told me there are more Catholics in Philadelphia than Quakers worldwide.) This vast scale may have buffered past hierarchs from catching a whiff of mortality, but it is heartening to see that Francis, at least so far, is not hiding from reality.

I would like to see whether Friends can rise to the challenge of not hiding. We don't have the numbers; instead, we cling to various conceits to shelter us from the implications of low numbers. Those conceits amount to one or another variation of "it's quality that counts." In one sense, that's true, but that's also a door to terrible, perhaps fatal, elitism.

We do have our own "young churches" and, thanks in part to Friends World Committee for Consultation, we're more in touch with those young churches (including those where English isn't the first language) than ever before. But what's being imposed on those young churches? Too often here in Russia, the message from visiting Friends seems to be the importance of being "quakerly" rather than the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. Their definitions may be very different from the anxieties of Catholic authoritarians, but to me they seem equally short of the mark. And whatever we might think of the Catholics, we're a lot closer to organizational extinction.

Should I be anxious? If we Quakers are not at God's disposal, others will rise up (have already risen up?) to take our place, and perhaps to keep the promises of God that were once entrusted to us.

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"Marilynn Robinson on Staying out of Trouble."

"Why Putin Refuses To Let the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Library Leave Moscow." (Thanks to aldaily.com.)

"Would Jesus be cool with keeping poor kids in orphanages?"

"Quakers relief and rescue in 1930s and 1940s Europe."

"Spirituality in contexts of violence."

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Champion Jack Dupree is "Going to Bremen to Get On the Radio." "I love Germany," he sings, "That's the place for me." One of the stranger videos I've presented as dessert here.