Gathering to meet with God

It has been nearly 36 years since I walked into Ottawa Friends Meeting and worshipped with Friends for the very first time. Having grown up in an atheist family, this was one of my very first experiences of "church," and I dragged along two of my Canadian relatives as security (in other words, to hide behind). It just so happened (!) that these relatives were part of a charismatic congregation that rented space from Ottawa Friends.

Quaker worship: In some Friends meetings (often labeled "unprogrammed"), the whole period of worship is based on silent waiting, during which anyone present may speak if prompted to do so by God's inspiration. Unprogrammed meetings rarely have pastors. Most Friends around the world would fit into the "programmed" category-- incorporating elements such as a sermon, a children's message, hymns, and readings. They may or may not include a period of silent waiting during which anyone may contribute as they are inspired. Sermons are often, but not always, given by the meeting's pastor. Some Friends meetings have adopted forms of baptism or communion as symbolic observances. Most Friends prefer to interpret "baptism" and "communion" as inward realities rather than outward observances.

Given my background, I felt very strange about being in an explicitly religious place. My mother had made religious language absolutely taboo in our household, along with any references to mortality or morbidity. Surely I would make a complete fool of myself, either from my inherited hyper-critical attitude, or from sheer awkwardness.

The worship itself, on the other hand, was bliss. We simply slipped into the meeting room, sat down ... and were utterly free to contemplate anything in God's creation, mundane or exalted. The simple brochure I'd picked up, "Your first time in a Friends' meeting?", was gently, Godwardly suggestive rather than prescriptive. During the hour, four Friends spoke. I especially remember Joe Metail urging us to bring our needs to the community.

The room itself was achingly simple: chairs arranged in concentric squares around a table on which were copies of the Bible and (the then-named) London Yearly Meeting's Christian Faith and Practice. On the otherwise bare wall was a cross!--quite a rare feature for an unprogrammed meeting, but this was a "found" cross, a cruciform tree branch.

I can't claim that my thoughts were all sparkling and exalted for the full hour, but I vividly remember being profoundly at home, at peace, and very deeply confirmed in my conversion. I was no longer a solo Christian; now I'd gone public, now I'd become part of a new family--one that would in fact help me grow in my conversion. My journey ever since that day has been, at least in part, getting to know that family better. And "to know" means, at the very least, to "worship with."

OK, what do I mean, "worship with"? I mean, not least, being physically present with, doing what it takes to walk, bicycle, drive, get transported to these other members of my family, so that we can, whatever our individual situations, moods and preoccupations, be together to honor God publicly. Even if there are just a couple of others present; or even if the crowd is so big that my presence might not be noticed. Even if I'd rather spend that hour walking in nature all by my precious self; or even if I'm not on good terms with some of those family members. That last point is absolutely part of my experience. As a denominational leader and as a pastor, at times I've had to enter meeting rooms in which I knew I'd be worshipping with people who had wronged me, or whom I'd wronged. Escape, however attractive, was not an option--and I'm incredibly grateful to report that when worship began, I nearly always experienced a powerful and healing reorientation of my wounded perspective.

(This reminds me of a reading--can't remember the source--that was part of the original New Call to Peacemaking materials. In attempting to understand Christian responsibility in the context of world war, we don't try to start with Hitler and somehow move toward God; rather we start with God and move toward Hitler.)

This physical "being-with" has a unifying, transcendent purpose: to be with God, to meet with God. As Anthony Bloom teaches in his wonderful talk "Prayer Is a Meeting" (Russian original here), we cannot have a true meeting with others if we are on guard or hiding behind pretense; and this is just as true as we meet with God. To me, the best of all worlds is meeting with God in the company of others doing the same. This is as true when I'm alert and attentive, as it is when I'm frustrated and tempted to pretend; my individual ebbings and flowings are part of the life of the whole, and so we bear each other up.

I'll never forget when a weighty Friend, John Kaltenbach, got up at Uwchlan Meeting in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, and began his message with the words, "It's not my father or my mother, it's me, Lord, standing in the need of prayer. It's not my sister or my brother, it's me, Lord, standing in the need of prayer." At that precise moment I needed to know that even experienced Friends can admit need. Another powerful moment happened at Beacon Hill Meeting in Boston, when I noticed that another Friend, a member of the residential community, was weeping--and I knew inwardly right away that it was because of something painful that I had recounted the previous evening.

This essential quality of meeting--that is, meeting with each other to make the time and space for meeting, together, with God--is the essential ground of Quaker worship. Whatever else might happen when we gather, we can't ever forget to give the Holy Spirit the central place in our time together.

What else should happen? In order to keep that space open, to ground ourselves in biblical discernment (yes, there are counterfeit spiritualities energetically marketing themselves, but also wonderful prophets speaking in fresh ways, too!), to nurture anticipation in ourselves, our guests, and our children, and to provide for the varied temperaments and gifts among us, we don't confine ourselves to silent prayer. We often sing and play instruments and teach and preach and greet and announce and contribute money and food.

Different Friends groups make different distinctions as to whether these activities can take place "within" the worship time or not. But I'm not sure that the old traditional division--between the unprogrammed worship on the one hand, with 100% of the worship time devoted to "open" worship, and the programmed meeting on the other, with open worship given from two minutes to twenty (very rarely more) along with hymns, a sermon, and other planned elements--is adequate.

As I hinted in a previous posting, "Silences," I worry that an esthetic of perfect silence can sometimes take hold in unprogrammed meetings--in fact, I've seen it happen.  There can be a lot of anxiety and unwritten rules about how soon to speak, how often, how enthusiastically, whether reading is allowed, and so on; also, how much ambient noise can be tolerated, and how much beyond an hour the meeting can be allowed to go! I utterly resist the notion that an unprogrammed Quaker meeting is only suitable for certain cultures and economic groups, but I do believe that pseudo-intellectual or middle-class rigidities can create unintended social walls around what should be among the most open, Spirit-filled, and liberating forms of Christian worship.

Those of us who use hybrid forms of Quaker worship have different temptations to deal with. Wess Daniels puts it very well: "In programmed churches it is really easy for one person to take up all the space in a room, and let’s be honest, often this is the preacher." Worship that truly involves publicly gathering around our most profound hopes and fears, that challenges us to meet in raw truth, can also bring out our deep insecurities. In the unprogrammed meeting, I can give up that amazing collective freedom and simply tend my own inner garden; but in the programmed meeting, we can engage in a tacit group decision to crowd God out with pious behaviors of our own design. Or we can do something new: we can throw away those traditional "programmed" and "unprogrammed" tags and deliberately, prayerfully choose those elements--before, during, and after the "formal" meeting--that teach us, encourage us to await the Holy Spirit, who will lead us into all truth.

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I've appreciated Wess Daniels' recent blog postings on unprogrammed (open, silent, waiting) worship among Friends. Here's the list:

The Resurrection and Quaker Communion
Preparing for Unprogrammed Worship in A Programmed (Quaker) Meeting
One Take On the Importance of the Quaker Practice of “Open Worship”

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Righteous links:

A Quaker's odyssey to Eastern Orthodoxy (a repeat, but it seemed timely).

This is the first I've heard of a "Robin Hood tax."

A Musing Environment considers cultural influences on how we regard climate change.

Two new books "taking the measure of Barack Obama."

Reports on the International Consultative Conference on Criminal Justice (thanks to Harvard's Hauser Center).

Victor Erofeyev on "The Past, Present, and Future of Katyn."

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Ole Frimer and Olav Poulsen--more blues from Denmark:

The best reality television, part two

Vivid memories of my childhood and teenage years as a devoted follower of the U.S. space program came back to me this past week, thanks to observances of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Those were turbulent years for the world and for our family. Through all the violence and heartbreak (local and global), the astronauts and their colleagues methodically pursued their step-by-step program to reach and explore the moon. The effort may have been born in the urgent rivalries of the Cold War, but by the time of the landing, in 1969, the sense of a race had faded, at least in my perception. (And 1969 was the first year I started studying Russian!)

Thanks to radio and television, we were able to witness Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions for ourselves. Unlike catastrophes and disasters, these reality shows could be scheduled ahead of time, but unlike coronations and inaugurations, weddings and Nixon-in-China events, sitting on top of a rocket at 24,000 miles per hour had a certain element of risk.

When Apollo 11 launched, I can't now remember which I liked better--the close-up views of a launch, with the huge Saturn V rumbling majestically past the camera ... or the view from Cocoa Beach, where the horizon almost swallowed up that tiny, pencil-thin rocket that seemed far too slight to reach the top of the TV screen, never mind almost a quarter million miles away. In any case, three fragile human beings were being propelled toward the unforgiving environment of space by supersonic jets of flaming gases, with tons of explosive fuel between humans and flames. On hand at Cape Canaveral to witness their departure were reporters from many countries, along with Lyndon Johnson, Rev. Ralph David Abernathy and representatives of the Poor People's Campaign, and thousands of others. And I was sitting at the front window of our second-floor apartment in Evanston, Illinois, recording CBS radio news on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, unaware of course that in forty years I could hear all the space-to-ground audio of that flight on a computer network facility called wechoosethemoon.org.

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Belated congratulations to fellow Quaker blogger Liz Oppenheimer, whose collection of essays that have appeared on Friends' blogs, Writing Cheerfully on the Web, has now been available for a couple of weeks. Liz has several interesting posts explaining the genesis of this book and how she put it together. For example: "Writing Cheerfully on the Web ... very soon," and "FAQs about the book, not yet asked." I like the description posted at quakerbooks.com: "This book brings to print the online conversation that has been mending our historical schisms and pointing to who we are as the Religious Society of Friends." You'll have to decide how accurate this is.

Back in 2005, I reminisced about writing Quaker essays on the Internet in the early 1990's toward the end of this post. See also Martin Kelley on the early blogging days. So much of the material from this era is no longer available easily, so Liz Opp's work will be valuable for future historians as well as those who care about cross-Quaker ministries today.

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This week's crop of righteous links: My favorite comments in memory of Frank McCourt. Second best: Guardian's obituary. ~~ Where will we buy souvenirs? (story one, story two). ~~ The New York Times "Media Decoder" blog helpfully groups together a classic set of Walter Cronkite videos. ~~ One of our best Quaker writers has begun her own blog. ~~ Carter and the "Elders" challenge "injustice wherever we see it." (Thanks to Martin E. Marty's Sightings for the reference.) ~~ "The fifty greatest trailers of all time." Credit for this link goes to veryshortlist.com. Caution: Don't visit if you are in a hurry. ~~ Missionaries apologize for "despising" Africans. ~~ And Russia has its own Obama. (This would be a humorous story but for racism that ranges from the vicious to the almost naive.) ~~ Donald E. Miller, author of Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium (reviewed here) talks to Christianity Today about the "S Factor." ~~ Somewhere in these Web wanderings, I came across this gem: The Internet Mission Photography Archive. ~~ "Cuba for Christ": A Christian revival in Cuba?

Perpetual War Watch: Another Tomgram must-read, David Bromwich on "America's Serial Warriors." Excerpt: "We are now close to codifying a pattern by which a new president is expected never to give up one war without taking on another. ... It is not only the vast extent and power of our standing army that stares down every motion toward reform. Nor is the cause entirely traceable to our pursuit of refined weapons and lethal technology, or the military bases with which the U.S. has encircled the globe, or the financial interests, the Halliburtons and Raytheons, the DynCorps and Blackwaters that combine against peace with demands in excess of the British East India Company at the height of its influence. There is a deeper puzzle in the relationship of the military itself to the rest of American society. For the American military now encompasses an officer class with the character and privileges of a native aristocracy, and a rank-and-file for whom the best possibilities of socialism have been realized."

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Magic Slim and the Teardrops are "Going to Mississippi." I felt like keeping it very basic.

Recording ministers; calling pastors

At a recent Friends' pastors gathering, one pastor mentioned that he was leaving his meeting this summer. He said that they had not yet found a new pastor, and recommended that anyone free to consider a pastorate should pay attention to this meeting, because they treat pastors well.

That comment came back to me when I was looking at my earlier post on "FUM and symbolic politics," because the very last comment on that post (as of now) was from Lisa, who asked, "Johan, for all of us out here in Quakerdom, would you please explain exactly what is 'the recording of ministers' and the 'calling or recalling of pastors'?" Somehow I never noticed that question, for which I apologize.

"Calling pastors" is a subject I'm tempted to avoid in writing for an audience that includes people with documented skepticism about Quakers even having pastors. If I reveal how similar the process is to making sausages, will their skepticism be confirmed? So let me stall for a bit by looking at the recording of ministers.

Others may give more official or more nuanced descriptions of what this is all about, and I can cite the books of faith and practice used among us, but I've always taken the term "recording" very simply and literally: It's when a meeting for business records in their minutes that they've noticed sufficient evidence that Friend X has gifts of public ministry. In some yearly meetings, that minute, recorded in the monthly meeting's minute book, is the end of the process; Friend X is a "recorded minister." In other yearly meetings, such as the one where I was first recorded (Indiana), the monthly meeting initiates a process that culminates with a minute approved, usually after at least a year of consideration, by a plenary session of the yearly meeting sessions. That year or more of consideration may include discussion by their yearly meeting of elders or of ministry and counsel, and may also include asking the potential recordee to complete seminary courses or yearly meeting workshops or a reading program to correct perceived deficiencies in their biblical, theological, pastoral, or denominational preparation.

At the time I was in the recording process, those deficiencies could be addressed in a wonderful little program called the Tri-Yearly Meeting School on the Ministry, operated together by Wilmington, Western, and Indiana Yearly Meetings. I taught classes for that school twice, once before I myself was recorded.

There's nothing super-spiritual about being recorded; it's essentially a more permanent (though revocable) form of obtaining a minute for travel in ministry. It is a compact way for your meeting to tell Friends elsewhere that you've been found to be reliable in expressing Friends faith and practice in public. It is theologically different from ordination, although on a practical level it may open doors (for example, for prison ministry) that ordination opens in other denominations.

I've run into several sources of confusion about recording of ministers, and how it relates to pastoring, and here are some of them, expressed as questions:

In recording ministers, aren't you setting up a hierarchy, implying special status, or putting people on a pedestal? In theory, no. Our doctrine of the equality of all persons is not threatened by saying "this person has a public gift, and we feel led to confirm it publicly." However, if gender or social status or other irrelevant criteria entered into the process, smoothing the way for some and blocking others, that would compromise the practice of recording. Also, if recorded ministers were treated with undue deference, or were given any privilege other than being permitted to exercise their gifts, that undue deference would also be a problem.

The denial of recognition of public ministry, especially when denying people who by social stereotype are not seen as carrying spiritual authority, can represent the opposite problem--a form of marginalization. I remember one example of a modest but spiritually gifted woman being considered for recording, in the face of opposition by men who used the equality argument despite their own prestigious credentials in their work settings. Moreover, the absence of explicit recognition of public gifts does not prevent elitism and power plays. When criteria for recognition are not explicit, those who want recognition or influence for the sake of their own agendas will still find ways of getting it, but without transparent criteria and accountability.

Nevertheless, the concern about equality is probably the single most important reason that recording of gifts has fallen into disuse or dropped entirely by some (especially unprogrammed) yearly meetings. The fact that there are now many other ways we can find out about who ministers "acceptably" may also play a role.

Is it okay to want to be recorded? This is a fascinating question to me. I think there's a tradition among Friends that recording should be entirely initiated by others in the meeting, and the person who is proposed for recording should be surprised, or pretend to be. I'm sure this still happens--it happened to me. Donna Moore, now a UCC minister but then a pastoral intern at First Friends Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, was my nominator. But, although I was surprised, it was a pleasant surprise, an affirmation of the ministry I was already doing. Although I'd hope that elders in every meeting and church are concerned to support and nurture public ministry (and recording is a particular form of encouragement), I don't see anything wrong with someone asking, "Should I be considered for recording? I would like to undergo this discernment process."

Some Friends emphasize that the full name for this recording process is not "recording of ministers" but "recording of gifts in the ministry." I agree in theory, but the gifts are embodied in the flesh and blood (and spirit) of a person, and we're recording that person's name.

What constitutes "expressing Friends faith and practice"? What is public ministry? In his article on "Ministers" in the Historical Dictionary of the Friends (Quakers), Larry Barker writes, "Public ministry is the calling to repeated preaching, prophecy, or other vocal spiritual leadership." (Bold words indicate that the dictionary has articles on those topics.) Is that a wide enough definition? When I was recorded, my "vocal spiritual leadership" was as a staff member for Friends World Committee, and its Right Sharing of World Resources program (now a separate organization). Another person recorded the same year, Dick Wood, was president of Earlham College. Both of us spoke frequently, but we were not classical ministers in a more typical model, either programmed or unprogrammed, within a local meeting.

I wonder how many recorded ministers have served as staff members of Friends organizations, including Friends Committee on National Legislation, the American Friends Service Committee, or similar organizations outside the USA. And what about Friends who are serving those organizations but are not recorded? If they're speaking publicly in the name of Friends, representing Friends faith and practice, and are doing so to the satisfaction of their local meetings and churches, wouldn't it be a helpful practice to minute this fact? Or would that weaken the concept of recording? I really don't know.

Those whose ministry is nonverbal provide another variation on the question of the scope of public ministry in the context of recording ministers. I would rather trust the discernment of a gathered meeting, than decree that a musician or a sculptor, for example, wouldn't fit the criteria, if by their ministry they were providing reliable public access to Friends faith and practice.

So what is the connection between being recorded and being a pastor? Within unprogrammed meetings where the practice of recording of ministers survives but where there is no role quite like that of a released and compensated pastor, the answer is simple: none.

It's more complicated in yearly meetings such as Indiana and Northwest, where most recorded ministers are pastors or former pastors (or missionaries). But they're not synonymous. In most pastoral yearly meetings, a meeting can call a pastor who's not recorded; and you can be recorded without serving or intending to serve as a pastor. Sometimes a meeting records its pastor (or initiates the recording process) as a form of assessment and appreciation; I know several young pastors who've had this route to recording. I suppose it is possible that someone has somehow initiated or welcomed the recording process to improve their credentials and their chances of snagging a lucrative pastorate (!!!), but, honestly, I've never seen it.

Several yearly meetings encourage pastors to go into the recording process if they're not already recorded, because that process includes a substantial component of exposure to Quaker faith and practice, or to the faith and practice of their particular yearly meeting. This helps integrate pastors who come to Friends from other denominations, or whose meetings are geographically or psychologically isolated from the yearly meeting.

What do you mean by "calling" a pastor? The Historical Dictionary doesn't include either the verb "to call" or the noun "calling," but their popular meanings are fairly simple:

"To call" means to recruit someone as pastor (or other role) on the basis of a meeting's decision that it has been led to this particular candidate. And as in some other Christian communities, a "calling" can be a specific sense of being led to a ministry, or a more general conviction that ministry is one's personal vocation, what God created you to be; and to "answer this calling" is to respond faithfully to God. So, you can feel called to be a pastor. And, once you are known to have this calling, it won't be surprising that a meeting might call you (sometimes worded as "issuing a call" to you) to serve as their pastor.

I chose the term "recruit" partly for its unromantic tone. The call should originate from the prayers and discernments of a meeting for business, but we shouldn't spiritualize our description of the process beyond all recognition! A few years ago, David Brock wrote an article for Quaker Life entitled "The ABC's of Finding a New Pastor," which is refreshingly candid about what the mechanics of the process often actually look like. And it's fairly true to my own experience of being called by Reedwood Friends Church back in 2000.

Is this calling of pastors done any differently by Friends than by other Christian communities? I think it would be straining the truth to say we do it better or more spiritually than anyone else. The politics of discernment and persuasion work the same way for us as for others. But here are some features of our process that make it congenial to us, whether or not we're unique:

• Many meetings still consider one candidate at a time. There's a willingness to say, "This is the person we're led to, and we're not going to the next candidate until the process is complete with this one."
• Although in some yearly meetings the staff of the yearly meeting office exercises considerable influence, generally the actual decision on whom to call is exclusively a monthly meeting decision, made in a meeting for worship for business.
• Throughout the whole history of Friends pastors, both men and women have been called, though mostly not in equal numbers.

The whole story of equality of sexes among Quaker pastors could probably not be told without knowing how many women never even considered the possibility of being pastors for lack of encouragement or role models. There's a related challenge for all Friends: We've claimed that we choose leaders based on gifts rather than social status. But if we actually don't consistently use ways of discerning and calling out gifts, our theoretical virtue does us little good. I'll never forget the Friend who said, "We Friends ought not to evangelize. Let people find their own God." How did she think Quakerism survived long enough to reach her, and how many Friends with the gift of evangelism has she discouraged with her anointings of cold water? (I have a theory that the gift of evangelism is present among unprogrammed Friends in roughly equal proportion to its presence among evangelical Friends.)

Finally, I haven't heard "to recall" used in these contexts. However, I have heard of people's recordings being rescinded, and at least one yearly meeting (mine) asks each recorded minister every year, "Do you continue to feel called to public ministry in keeping with your recording or do you feel your ministry responsibilities have been completed?"

Update: recording of ministers as practiced by our new yearly meeting, Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends.

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Righteous links: The online Faith and Practice makes it easy to compare practices among some Friends yearly meetings. For example, using the keyword "recording" I found this description of the recording process in my yearly meeting. ~~~ Tuesday the New Sanctuary telephone/e-mail tree here was active because of a large Immigrant and Customs Enforcement raid. Oregonian coverage here; Portland Indymedia here. ~~~ This Time magazine article on Anglican leader Rowan Williams was better journalism than I've come to expect from mainstream coverage of the religion-and-sexuality wars. I wanted to say, "I've been there!"--although in a constituency that did not, even in the worst of times, subject me to the pressures he's going through. ~~~ We don't anoint our recorded ministers with oil, but if we did, I'd advocate using this Palestinian olive oil distributed through the American Friends Service Committee. ~~~ Goodbye to Ruth Bell Graham.

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One of my favorite lines from a blues song: Bonnie Raitt singing "I ain't a porcupine, take off your kid gloves." ("Thing Called Love")

Sorry for the cheesy video, but the music makes up for it.... Update: Below the video I've posted my gapfill exercise for our students in Elektrostal.

Quaker Blog Carnival!

Quaker Blog Carnival
(Bible-reading fox from ChristArt.)

When I was a member of the Friends World Committee staff, one of my most important jobs was arranging regional conferences at which Friends of different origins and viewpoints would be able to gather, worship, and compare notes on either other's faith and practice. This job was rewarding -- Friends were able to observe similarities and true differences first-hand, instead of relying on rumor and assumptions.

The job was also frustrating -- so many Friends did not have the opportunities or resources to attend conferences, and many simply were not conference-goers by temperament. A few had been burned by less than respectful encounters at previous gatherings.

Nothing can replace being together in person, but short of that, the advent of Friendly weblogs has provided a whole new dimension of fellowship and consultation to the Quaker world. And nobody has played a more crucial role in the development of this new pattern than Martin Kelley. 

I started my "Can you believe?" blog in June 2004, and it could not have been more than a few days before I received a kind note of encouragement from Martin. I have no doubt that many others have had a similar experience.

Back when I was involved with Quaker Life magazine, I wrote an editorial nearly every month. I didn't realize how addictive that form of expression would be! For me, maintaining a Friendly weblog has allowed me to indulge that need, with the very important added benefit of receiving almost immediate feedback. 

Cherice and Chris have wonderfully summarized many of the blessings of the world of Quaker blogging and the Grand Central Water Cooler of the community, quakerquaker.org. I agree with everything they've said. Not only do we discuss important ideas and leadings that cumulatively help us be more faithful people, we also give each other glimpses of our personal worlds and generate new ties of mutual care. (I certainly experienced that when my mother died.)

The ripple effects of the world of Friendly weblogs goes out beyond the immediate reading/writing community of bloggers. One practical example: several blogging discussions have resulted in or have been reflected in Friends' periodicals. By ourselves, and within the limits of cyberspace, we will not reach everyone who deserves access to this kind of affectionate and unanxious cross-Quaker arena. Meetings, conferences, retreats, and ceaseless intervisitation are more important than ever, especially across lines that the powers that be tell us not to cross. But our online community can be an incubator--not just of fertile ideas (such as Robin's "convergence") and courteous challenges, but also of a spirit of reconciliation, of weeding out false dichotomies from conflicts actually worth having, of the mutual love and forbearance that the Children of the Light ought to enjoy even in the midst of controversy.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Quaker

Will T. returned from Friends United Meeting's recent General Board meeting in Kenya with a troubling load of impressions that he faithfully posted on his weblog under the title, "Back from Africa with a broken heart."

I was not at the General Board meeting, but so much of what he wrote felt so similar to the struggles a generation ago between some Friends in the "FUM-only" yearly meetings and some Friends in the "united" or "confederated" yearly meetings that also belonged to the more liberal Friends General Conference. My first thought was, "Oh, no, not again," and I had to remind myself that these systemic issues are hardly ever cleared up once and for all.

Among its many other wonderful qualities and shadowy sins, FUM is still paying for the decades it spent trying to pretend that it was truly "united," served by a staff and a leadership caste that, by and large, was highly invested in presenting the best face to each end of the spectrum, trying to be good friends (and actually succeeding miraculously often) with people who were often not friends with each other. Among the survival tactics: publishing a magazine that was as inoffensive as possible, therefore hardly ever carrying any substantial news, and publishing two lines of Quaker curriculum, Living Light and Living Word, for a market that was so small that it could barely sustain one.

The theological civil war known as "realignment" (which I briefly summarized in my comments here) was precipitated by a number of crises, including the embarrassing spectacle of a Triennial (1987) that almost could not unite in adopting a Christian self-description, and the controversial adoption of a sexual ethics policy. I became general secretary just as some of the passions of realignment were cooling off. The first board meeting of my seven years at FUM adopted a purpose statement that, for once, defined FUM not as an organization in charge of keeping everyone "United" at any cost, but as an association of Friends whose functional unity was grounded in a programmatic purpose. Friends could opt in or opt out of involvement with FUM, not on the basis of whether there were other Friends somewhere in the FUM community whose beliefs or folkways would trigger their allergies, but on the basis of a shared commitment to evangelism -- energizing and equipping Friends "through the power of the Holy Spirit to gather people into fellowships where Jesus Christ is known, loved, and obeyed as Teacher and Lord." In any case, FUM's success would be based on what it did, and whom it attracted in that service, not on being inoffensively winsome to everyone in order to preserve its core organizational conceit. Furthermore, those who did not share its purpose would presumably not have the leverage to sabotage that purpose.

It's not that balancing acts of linguistic symbolism were entirely given up: "Teacher" is a valid and powerful metaphor for the work of Christ, but it's a metaphor that is more associated with the liberal side of the community, whereas "Lord" is decidedly not. Nevertheless, the adoption of this simple purpose statement was a liberation for the staff and board of FUM. In a time of shrinking tolerance with traditional denominational bureaucracies, FUM no longer had to have a department to carry out every conceivable denominational function, anxious to balance each "orthodox" function (for example, missions) with a "liberal" function (peace and social concerns). Instead, we simply needed to ask ourselves how any given assignment related to the energizing and equipping of Friends for evangelism.

The other huge advantage of this purpose statement was its outward orientation. I love William Temple's assertion that the church is the only association that exists primarily for the sake of its non-members, but FUM's balancing acts and intermural struggles were taking energy away from that priority. It was wonderful to have permission again to remember that, while we jockey among ourselves, "the world as I see it is dying, literally dying, for lack of Quakerism in action." (Hugh Doncaster.)

So that's a bit of what was behind my "not again!" sinking feeling as I read the report from the FUM Board. I wrote several lengthy contributions to the comment section of Will's post, and seriously considered crossposting those comments here. I think the things I said there were important to get on the table, and I very much appreciated the loving give and take provided by Will, Marshall, and others.

But as I got ready to do that crossposting, a heaviness came over me. Being a Friend is not a matter of finding just the right combination of subtle ideas, Bible verses, and snippets of Robert Barclay, tastefully presented with the right blend of content and process. Being a Friend doesn't depend on mastery of a rhetoric, or on finding the verbal Holy Grail (borrowing here from Larry Ingle, I think) of Quakerism's unique intellectual and spiritual genius. Somehow, being a Friend is still a light and agile thing, a joyful and first-generation thing, a sprite in a community of sprites among the lumbering elephants of religiosity. (Okay, so I get a little carried away!) It's wanting and hungering to be as close to Jesus as possible; it's trying to be around others with that same yearning; it's trying to help each other live that way; it's trying to work out, in community, what the ethical consequences are; and it's working on keeping the doors of access open, so that there will always be people who are in the first generation. Not that those who have gone before are unimportant; but they're companions, not ancient Chatty Cathys with soundbites playing on endless loops.

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Righteous links: Speaking of evangelism, try to top this: Shock and Agape. And from the realm of cinematic evangelism, here's "A Tale of Two Movies" [dead link]. I don't know whether I'll see either film (Facing the Giants and Stranger than Fiction), but I enjoyed reading Tim Jackson's review. [Here's another review of the two movies.]

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In 2002, I met and listened to an incredible Australian guitar player named Fiona Boyes, whom Pinetop Perkins (present at the same Waterfront Blues Festival) acclaimed as a worthy successor to Memphis Minnie. To my delight, a Fiona Boyes clip landed in YouTube land, and without further ado -- see for yourself if Pinetop is right:

Perspective

A year ago yesterday, Judy and I spent much of our 25th anniversary on one of the historic Columbia River Highway walking trails. For our 26th anniversary, yesterday, we chose an urban variant: First we parked at OMSI. After buying something from their gift shop and leaving a message for a friend there, we set out on the Eastside Esplanade path along the Willamette River. We walked to the Burnside Bridge, crossed the river, walked ten blocks west, and strode bravely into Powell's bookstore. (Bravery is required there to resist temptation and ward off bankruptcy.) I added another couple of urban miles by making an additional loop to Way of a Pilgrim bookstore, specializing in Eastern Orthodox books and icons, at NW 21st and Hoyt. Reunited at Powell's, we escaped from there only $30 poorer. We returned to OMSI via Tom McCall Waterfront Park and the Hawthorne Bridge.

Inevitably, I've been thinking about how fast these 26 years have gone by, but also how much has happened in that swift passage of time. At the beginning, in 1980, the future meltdown of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is nearly unimaginable, and the Cold War (with the U.S. boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics) is a dominant paradigm. Also that year: El Salvador unravels further with the killing of Archbishop Romero; and Iraq attacks Iran, opening their savage eight-year war. In U.S. politics, the unholy alliance between evangelical Christian elites and right-wing politicians solidifies, as Bible-believing Christians are urged to favor the nominally religious Reagan over the evangelical incumbent Carter. A few years later, the names have all dramatically changed, but so many of the patterns are the same.

How much has changed in the Quaker world? In his talk at the 1976 Friends World Committee triennial meeting in Hamilton, Ontario, T. Canby Jones noted a trend of convergence, without (if I remember correctly) using the word: evangelical Friends were becoming more interested in silence and social justice, and liberal Friends were becoming more interested in theology and the Bible. We traded amusing anecdotes about people in one branch being totally unaware of the existence of Friends in other branches—not much has changed there, except that the Internet is a much cheaper way of exchanging anecdotes and reinforcing superiority than conference attendance.

I kept the July 1980 issue of Friends Journal because of an article by Parker Palmer, "Quakers and the Way of the Cross." He says,

I realize that the Christian story holds little merit for some Quakers, that within the Quaker community many are struggling to find new myths and symbols and images to bring meaning to a "post-Christian" world. And yet, I do not know how else to speak of my experience in life except in terms of crucifixion and resurrection. I look around me, and within me, and find the devastation caused by the threat of nuclear war; the relentless oppression of the weak and the poor; the impact of an econmy fueled by greed and a politics which relies on the tools of cercion and violence. And as I see these things, I find myself unable to speak of them as mere "social problems." I can only speak of a continuing crucifixion, a crucifixion of the Christ within every woman and man. And as I see these things, I am unable to find ultimate home in a multiplication of projects and programs for "social change." However important these things may be, I am compelled to reach deeper for hope, beyond our own works into the mystery of resurrection which only God can work among us.

Palmer continues with a sensitive walk through the outward and inward "stations of the Cross" that illuminate these opening words—stations and soul-movements such as recognition, resistance, acceptance, affirmation, and liberation.

Projects and programs will continue to come and go, along with the temporary heroes and villains who animate them. Their impermanence does not make them unimportant, it just makes me more concerned to locate them in a deeper story; in fact, in the ancient story of oppression, resistance, and liberation, of crucifixion and resurrection.

I even dare to think that the Quaker story must stop inflating itself and take a more modest and supplementary place. After three decades of idealistic Quaker-boosting, I am growing weary of cycles of complacency, gloom, and timid revival. I want to be watching and joining God's work in the world, not caught in some self-absorbed eddy. We Quakers have at least one important function in the wider Christian world—demonstrating to ourselves and everyone that church really can be as simple as a community of people who want to live with Jesus at the center, helping each other work out the processes and ethical consequences of that life. But we don't even do that one thing if we're so endlessly fascinated (or irritated) by our specialness.

None of that specialness need go to waste, actually. It's not the stuff of community that bothers me; we need to furnish our home with the furniture of shared references, models, doctrines, decisions, controversies. But I want that overstuffed home to be an incubator for people who will collectively have the spiritual sensitivity and prophetic courage to put the highest priority on the needs of people who've never heard of us, rather than on the perfection of our internal categories. Then today's projects and programs will take their place (as many already have, no doubt) in the ancient drama of crucifixion and resurrection.

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Two songs: Last Sunday, at Reedwood, we sang a chorus by Martin Reardon that included these words:

Shout to the earth His name
Let the whole world know His name
That Jesus is alive and He reigns on high
Shout to the earth His name.

A few hours later, at Ministerios Restauración, we were singing these words from Juan Carlos Alvarado:

No basta solo con cantar.
No basta solo con decir.
No es suficiente solo con querer hacer.
Es necesario morir.

(By itself, singing isn't enough; by itself, saying isn't enough; it's not sufficient just to want to do; it's necessary to die.)

Going back to "Shout to the earth," I have friends who would rather die than sing songs like that; maybe that's why they might need to sing that song just once, and try to understand why, for some of us, in some sense, that is the whole business of discipleship. (Let the whole world know His name, not because we Christians, we Quakers, are better than anyone else—we're not—but because in that name we speak truth, we resist, we create, we sing, we love.) And I have friends who seem to think that singing choruses with the right words is all there is to being a Christian. Of course, they're wrong; you also have to write a brave-sounding blog.

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I thank Sean's Russia Blog for a link to this interesting article by Charlie Ganske on Russia, the Middle East, and the complicated influences of oil prices on Russian-American relations. Another case of "the more things change...."?

Risk and resurrection

It may have been Angela Berryman of the American Friends Service Committee staff who said, at a Friends World Committee regional conference about twenty years ago, that she and others learned the meaning of resurrection by attending the funerals of their friends who perished violently in the Central American civil wars of those years.

In those years, I worked for Right Sharing of World Resources, which supported a medicinal plant project under the care of Salvadoran Lutheran Aid. The office address of the project was the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in San Salvador. I loved getting letters from that address; my eyes were always drawn to the word "resurrection."

Much of Central America has gone de la locura a la esperanza since then, but the trail of the red horse continues to slash the globe. Although safety is never guaranteed to any of us, most of us in North American Quaker blogdom do not live with daily risk. But risk, voluntarily accepted, has always been a part of discipleship. Resurrection, too. (See Frances Grandy Taylor's article in the Hartford Courant: "When living your faith means risking death.")

By our understanding, Tom Fox did not live to see this Easter. Neither did Marla Ruzicka, whom we lost a year ago. (Find video glimpses of her here.) I prefer to think they got there first.

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Maxine writes that she and the Baghdad CPT team are leaving Baghdad for a time. This arrived yesterday:

Dearest friends-

Well, I'm finally making my way home for a bit. I'm in Amman, Jordan right now and will be leaving for the United States tomorrow. I have some work to do when I get back, as there is a meeting or two I have to attend, and then hopefully I'll be able to take some time off with family and friends.

The CPT Iraq team has decided to have all of the team come out for a while based on the advice of friends and working partners in Iraq. Nearly all of the people we consulted suggested some time out, partly because we are very visible in Iraq right now and partly because the situation is deteriorating. They suggest waiting until the new government gets up and running, hopefully in about two months but perhaps longer.

They don't mention the alternative if the government is not able to form itself, which is civil war. So, we are in a "wait and see" mode for now.

It was incredibly difficult to literally close the door behind me as I left Baghdad, to leave people who have become family over the years. I have the option to leave when things get tough; most of them do not have the same option. I felt like a coward. However, most of them said the same thing to us--"You are too precious to us to have anything happen to you. We can't have another death among you."

It's simply amazing to me that they feel this way. It is real love they feel for us, a deep and tender love.

Although we feel strange about it, we are taking their counsel. After all, we are guests in their country. It's not our right, but rather our privilege, to be there.

I'm struck by the difference in the way we as CPT have been advised and how we have chosen to take advice, and in the way the US government and its military has heard the voice of Iraqis saying "leave" yet refuse to go. It seems to me that the bottom line is whether we are serving our own interests, or those of the people we say we say we have come to serve.

Due to the fact that I need a good, long rest I haven't made myself available for any speaking just yet. With the future uncertain I'm leaving it open for now, and waiting to see what way God leads in this.

Blessings to you all, and the next time I will hopefully be back with you in the U.S.

Peace to you-
Maxine

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I appreciated the gracious exchange that Brooklyn Quaker recorded in the post "April Fool satire not intended as sarcasm" and the comments that followed.

In fact, his graciousness came as a just rebuke to my sometimes cranky attitude toward inter-Quaker dialogue—particularly his generous reply to Pam's question, "I guess I just feel like there are so very many religions where you can cleave to christian doctrine, why are you a quaker??" I highly recommend his thoughtful response, which he promised to amplify later.

It is not Pam's fault at all that the question reminded me of two questions I heard years ago in other contexts. At an All-Kentucky Gathering of Friends, someone said to me that he could understand why his secretary was a Christian; she didn't know better. But surely I had the brainpower to know better!? I was so taken aback by the question at several levels that I cannot remember what I said.

The second question was asked on the floor of Friends Church Southwest's yearly sessions, during a discussion on the yearly meeting leadership's proposal to allow symbolic baptism and communion if local churches wanted it. "There are so many other churches where people can enjoy these ceremonies," began the questioner (based on my memory). "Why would you take away our unique understanding of spiritual reality?"

Billy Lewis, long-time Christian educator in the yearly meeting, openly grieved. He asked, in substance, how they could have failed so completely in educating their people in the essentials of Quaker doctrine.

If his yearly meeting failed in a secondary matter, the spiritual understanding of baptism and communion, I find it much more serious that other Friends bodies have failed in a central matter, the definition of Friends as a community who experience and organize themselves around Jesus Christ coming to teach his people himself.

Friends began, not as a relativization of Christianity, but as an intensification of Christianity. We did not throw away the Baby with the bathwater, but (sorry if you've heard this rant before!), the new scented bathwater in use among some seems to be so fine that the Baby can be left in the cold, and this is somehow called Quakerism! The majority of Friends in the world were never consulted about our name being used as a cover for marginalizing our Savior. If you can sense how sad and bizarre this seems to some of us, then you will understand why we sometimes despair of meaningful dialogue among Friends. Thank goodness there are still bridgebuilders like Rich Accetta-Evans, who has the patience to accompany us through our despair, wherever we find ourselves in these dilemmas.

Nevertheless, I would find it dishonest if I didn't ask the question that haunts me: Why would those who can't unite with Christianity insist on staying among Friends? There are so many ways of being non-Christian or loosely Christian, whereas Quakers have held up a unique and powerful understanding of Christian discipleship. But perhaps the spirit of Billy Lewis's question needs to be heard: What kind of educational vacuum have the "experienced" Quakers left that would cause anyone to contemplate a relativized quakerism without the living Christ?

It is possible that Pam's question is more directly aimed at liberal Friends, and not the larger worldwide Quaker movement, among whom liberals (however defined) are a minority. Is it possible that liberal Friends and "orthodox" Friends are simply two completely different religions with common historical roots, as the advocates of "realignment" asserted fifteen years ago to the near ruination of Friends United Meeting?

Perhaps, on an organizational chart, the answer might appear to be "yes." But I resist that simplistic characterization—it implies neat divisions between faith and practice, and between language and reality, that simply don't hold up. The most exciting Christian Quakers to work with, in my experience at FUM, were often those coming from the "liberal" communities. They were not burdened by churchy culture, outmoded models, and prefab rhetoric. Their experience of Christ was still at the thin line between expected and totally unexpected; they often had an amazing intellectual ability to synthesize Christian insight with politics, economics, and personal disciplines. Was I about to shut the door on the collaborations between (to risk stereotypes) Midwestern salt-of-the-earth, tested disciples, and these Eastern on-fire Quakers? Better to disrupt categories than get in the way of the Spirit.

So, even though I continue to gasp at the gulfs which occasionally open up between us, I know the bridges are still needed.

Easter blessings!

Atlanta shorts

Friends United Meeting deserves your support. This past weekend, at the board meeting of Friends United Meeting, Friends faced FUM's underfunded financial performance and imposed a four-day work week (and consequent 20% salary reduction) for nearly everyone on staff, except for the development director; one valued core member of the program staff was laid off.

I hope this action shocks Friends into a response. Don't take this irreplaceable Quaker resource for granted; don't use it as your proxy arena to vent spleen about differences between "your" kind of Friend and those "others." Don't assume without investigation that the sins of the past are today's reality. (By "sins of the past" I refer especially to a paralyzing need to placate those in its diverse constituency who did not even have a commitment to FUM's future—universalists and cultish aren't-we-special-because-we're-Quaker liberals on one hand and judgmental pseudo-evangelicals with self-assigned hero status and license to slander, on the other hand. That era is emphatically over. The group containing the highest number of permanently dissatisfied right wingers left under an ethical cloud in 1993, and the clearness minute and purpose statement of 1992 filtered out the theologically uncongenial on the left, although within their yearly meetings some of the latter still like to hold FUM financially hostage in an impressive imitation of Bush foreign policy.)

No association of Quaker yearly meetings has the capacity FUM does of putting together the discipleship resources of so many diverse Christ-centered Friends from so many different cultures, all directed toward providing access to a genuine Quaker Christian message for a world that badly needs it. And doing all that with an inclusive, prayer-based governance process.

In the not too distant past, denominational organizations were able to survive based on loyalties, connectional myths, and licensing powers (ordination, for example). Those factors are weak everywhere, and more so for FUM. Now our associations must earn their way by the merits of the ministries they enable us to do together. On that score, FUM deserves far more visibility and support than it is getting.


More about evil. Last week I mentioned that I was writing a chapter on evangelical Friends' understanding of evil for a book on Friends and questions of good and evil. Last Sunday, the Forum class at Reedwood Friends Church was kind enough to welcome me for a discussion of one specific aspect of the question: the personification of evil. I began by summarizing Friends' beliefs about depravity and original sin. Although we may be born with a universal vulnerability to temptation that we cannot resist unaided, we cannot be called sinners until we actually sin.

Then: To the extent that moral evil can be caused or encouraged by factors external to the originally innocent evildoer, can those factors be characterized as having demonic personalities and intelligences of their own, perhaps as agents of an intelligent master such as Satan? I summarized the writings of C. Peter Wagner, and read a few choice bits from Churches that Pray and Prayer Warfare. Or are the "principalities and powers" mentioned in the Bible, and the demonic influences illustrated there, actually the increasingly dense and powerful accumulation of evil decisions and evil consequences in the culture, the behavior patterns, of clans, organizations, institutions, even nations? I likewise read some selections from Walter Wink.

One of my sources of hope in recent years has been the willingness of such leaders as Wagner and Wink to acknowledge each other as siblings in Christ and to engage in courteous public exchanges. Sometimes their constituencies don't do as well.

How have you dealt with these questions? Which author has the better approach, Wink or Wagner, or are both partly right, or both completely wrong? Do you secretly long to label some people "totally depraved"?


Are you a mystic? Another Reedwood happening: The Center for Christian Studies is conducting an eight-week course on Christian mysticism, taught by my successor in adult ministries, Carole Spencer of George Fox Evangelical Seminary. I enjoyed last week's class and was sorry to be in Atlanta when this week's class came along. I'll be home well in time for the next one.

Last week we touched on mystical commentaries on the Song of Songs, a Bible book that is so powerfully erotic that some traditions tell believers not to read it before attaining sufficient spiritual maturity. Although those mystical commentaries relied heavily on metaphor and allegory, and that is clearly not the whole story with the Song of Songs, their insights ring very true to me. God's love for us cannot be any less passionate and whole-life and self-giving than the model of the Song.

In the class, I reflected on the fact that I've been a mystic of a minor variety for as long as I can remember, starting before my conversion. When I began to understand that there was a language for my experiences, I began reading. One day I bought the book Mysticism by F.C. Happold. As I was riding the bus back to Carleton University, I looked at the table of contents. I distinctly remember the feeling of disappointment I had when I realized how much of the content was Christian. To that point I'd always assumed that mysticism and Christianity were like oil and water. How little I knew!


Radio Yerevan. Somehow the subject of humor came up on my Web forum on Evangelism and the Friends testimonies. For some even more obscure reason, my mind went to Radio Yerevan, the mythical Soviet-era radio station whose advice program served as the hook for a form of humorous commentary on current events, politics, and other topics that were best not to address directly. I decided to see if anyone had collected some of those jokes online, and good old wikipedia did not let me down. The main article is here; there are more lists of jokes here (with duplications). A few of my favorites:

Q: Was comrade Lenin a scientist or a politician?
A: Of course, a politician. If he were a scientist, he would've first tried his theories on dogs.

Q: Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the Soviet Union the same as there is in the USA?
A: In principle, yes. In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House in Washington, DC, and yell, "Down with Reagan!", and you will not be punished. Just the same, you can stand in the Red Square in Moscow and yell, "Down with Reagan!", and you will not be punished.

Q: What is the difference between the Constitutions of the USA and USSR? Both guarantee freedom of speech.
A: In principle yes, but the Constitution of the USA also guarantees freedom after the speech.

Q: What is a Soviet musical duet?
A: It's a musical quartet after a trip abroad.

To me, there is a special sweetness to see answers start with "in principle," a filler phrase that some Russian-speakers use to start almost any answer to almost any question. In my experience, "In principle, yes..." usually means "no."

some fragrant flowers

We're getting closer to the long-awaited publication of the newest book in the Friends International Library (formerly the Russian Quaker Library). The book, Power of Goodness, has very honorable roots: it is based on the Friends General Conference book Lighting Candles in the Dark, which we modified for a bilingual Russian-English version about seven years ago. This new version includes a third language (Chechen), several stories and some children's art from Chechnya, a song and foreword by Pete Seeger, and cover art by Michael Hays.

The story of these multilingual versions of Lighting Candles in the Dark began about ten years ago. A small group of twelve-year-old students in Novgorod (a town of about 200,000 not too far from St. Petersburg) actually provided the inspiration for the Russian version. Many of the stories were read and discussed in English at a local Novgorod school in 1994. Their instructor, Janet Riley (who had been the organizer behind the joint Soviet-American anthology The Human Experience, and is now the executive secretary of the Friends International Library), had expected them to respond favorably but never expected such deep understanding and enthusiasm.

During one of the last classes, the children were invited to give their honest opinion of the stories and about the appropriateness of providing Lighting Candles in the Dark for other Russian children. Here is a sample of their discussion:

• "There are moments in these stories where we can do the same."
• "They teach us how to act."
• "Yes, they teach us to be kind and to help one another."
• "They show us another way."
• "They show that love is important."
• "It is good for us to know about children in other places in the world."
• "They give us ideas for our lives."

English teachers were also moved by the stories. Some of their comments include:

• "They remind me of the children's stories of Tolstoy."
• "They will help Russian school children relate to children in other parts of the world which is so important."
• "The response on the part of children would not be emotionless - they would understand and feel because the stories are devoted to children."
• "This book will be a valuable resource for teaching English and for stimulating classroom discussion."

With this positive encouragement, we swallowed hard and decided to prepare good translations, swap out stories for some local content, and most insanely of all, limit almost all of the illustrations to children's art. In fact, finding and selecting the art from children in the USA and Russia (with a beautiful candle illustration from Cuba) proved to be the largest logistical struggle, but it was worth it.

The illustrations themselves are available mounted for lending as a gallery show - it has been exhibited in several Quaker venues, including Earlham College and Reedwood Friends Church. Thanks to a wonderful recent gift from a member of Reedwood Friends, we're within two or three thousand dollars of the front money we need to get this new trilingual version published. It will then join the earlier edition and the other books in the Friends International Library, including Russian editions of Thomas Kelly's Testament of Devotion and John Woolman's Journal.

For me, a side blessing of this project has been the wonderful collaboration of Friends within Friends General Conference (who still publish the English-language edition), Friends United Meeting, and Evangelical Friends International. It can be done! Now we are wondering whether it is time to let this project expand beyond the former Soviet Union. There are certainly other parts of the world where adaptations of this book can contribute to grassroots peace education.

Before we get too carried away, however, we also have to prepare a new Russian edition; we are almost completely out of the first printing, which gives us an opportunity to make improvements and (especially) provide updated contact information for Russian Friends.

While we're on the subject of books ... Let me recommend Simon Fisher's 2004 Swarthmore Lecture, published by Quaker Books (Britain Yearly Meeting) as Spirited Living: Waging Conflict, Building Peace. Fisher, cofounder and codirector of Responding to Conflict, headquartered on the Woodbrooke campus in Birmingham, England, does a beautiful job of gently provoking Friends to be less detached and amateurish in peace work. He argues persuasively that in the search for faithful effectiveness, we need not be afraid of political conflict, nor of professionalism, properly understood.

Too often I've seen Friends seemingly forced to choose between being deeply rooted in a context of worship OR immersed in passionate activism. Fisher provides both theory and models for overcoming this false choice. His inclusive approach to activism feels very congenial to my own advocacy of the respectful division of labor that ought to occur in any congregation that is firing on all its spiritual-gift cylinders. His examples include the activism of prayer as well as of organizing, training, direct action.

The printed version is an attractive 123-page book available from Friends General Conference or the Quaker Book Shop, London. 

A new companion on the path A most readable volume of embodied spirituality: Girl Meets God: On the Path to a Spiritual Life, by Lauren F. Winner. During a period when I had no spare time for light reading, I gobbled this up in three days. I couldn't resist Winner's meditations on her own spiritual choices, especially since they're certainly not mature reflections from the vantage point of age, but emerged from the ongoing stream of her twentysomething life where nothing is guaranteed except (as she claims) the hold that Jesus has on her life.

I was equally interested when she discussed things completely outside my own experience (the meshing and clashing of her Jewish and Christian identities) and when I could identify far more closely (the pull between wholehearted evangelicalism and the world of culture and, ahem, sophistication ... or at least worldly credibility).

Her love affair with books (their content and their *blush* sheer physical beauty) is another point of contact with me. I had more of a struggle with her deep and eloquently expressed commitment to liturgy, but it felt good, even instructive, to rub against the depth of that commitment, letting it challenge my severe attitudes toward any form of obligatory theatricality in Christian worship. Maybe that's a discussion for another day. Although Winner addresses the American culture wars, her book does not encompass the deeper struggle between the spirit of piety and the spirit of social prophecy in the face of our culture's systemic death-worship. For the most honest and moving account of that internal struggle, I still recommend Jennifer Haines's Bread and Water (see below, July 12).