Praise and prophecy

Screenshot from source.  

Last Sunday, Daniel Smith-Christopher gave a sermon, "Disciples of the Sacred Story Tellers," at Reedwood Friends Church, that touched on, among other things, one of the recurring contrasts in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible:

We're all familiar with many of the difficult and troubling and sometimes violent attitudes in some of the passages of the Old Testament. It's why so many people have asked me over the years, "Old Testament! What's a Quaker doing studying and teaching the Old Testament? Aren't you a bit out of place?"

I enjoy sharing my thoughts as to why I don't think I am out of place at all. So, here's the strangely compelling part: sacred storytellers whose names we will never know in each case,  sacred storytellers in the Old Testament seemed to keep offering gentle, loving, sometimes compassionate stories in the face of terribly violent texts.

Daniel gave several examples of the way the Bible's storytellers provided this kind of contrasting content alongside some of the warnings of divine violence coming from various biblical prophets. See the video; he gives three interesting examples of prophets and storytellers.

It seems to me that this fits in with the divine dialogue that the Bible invites us into. That dialogue is what I try to enter into when I am particularly challenged by something in the Bible, something that seems contradictory or strange, something that I just don’t understand. Sometimes the participants in the dialogue are the biblical record and me, and sometimes I’m imagining a dialogue between different voices in the Bible itself.

In this post, my example of contrasting messages compares the psalms of praise and the warnings of the prophet Amos. Fifteen psalms include the imperative verb Hallelu (that is, "praise") followed by a short version of God’s name, Yah: so, Hallelujah. The last five psalms in the Bible are all part of this group of Psalms, but they vary in their descriptions of whom they’re asking to praise God, including the monsters of the deep sea. Psalm 150 keeps it simple … where, why, and how to praise:

Psalm 150

1 Praise the Lord.
     Praise God in God’s sanctuary;
     praise God in God’s mighty heavens.
2 Praise God for God’s acts of power;
     praise God for God’s surpassing greatness.
3 Praise God with the sounding of the trumpet,
     praise God with the harp and lyre,
4 praise God with timbrel and dancing,
     praise God with the strings and pipe,
5 praise God with the clash of cymbals,
     praise God with resounding cymbals.
6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.

On a Sunday last spring, one of our Camas Friends Church attenders gave a brief opening message, what we call the "First Word," and his text for that message was one of these last five praise psalms. As he read that psalm with dignity and reverence, I felt like a thirsty cactus getting a needed rainshower. If there’s one temptation some of us Quakers sometimes give in to, it’s the temptation to overthink things. Sometimes maybe we just need to let go and praise.

(By the way, that First Word speaker also talked about the reason we praise. It's not because God has an inferiority complex and needs our reassurance that the Creator of the Universe really is the Supreme Being. Now God might demand that we must not look for other gods, idols, and cultish substitutes, but goodness knows we can praise with our lips while drifting away with our souls. At our best, we praise because that is the soul’s natural response to the gift of life. If we’re responding to our being loved into existence by God, and, as Spokane Friends' John Kinney says, we realize that the stones will be rolled away from our own tombs as well as Jesus’s, our gratitude as expressed in praise seems like a natural and unforced expression.)

Contrast this imperative of praise in the psalms with what Amos is saying in the mid 700’s BC. Maybe you remember the context here: Amos has been reading the riot act to the people of Israel, particularly to the Northern Kingdom, accusing them of the same crimes of idolatry and oppression that he has seen in the surrounding Gentile nations, and saying that God demands the same purity and the same ethical standards of all of them, Israelites and Gentiles alike. He warns Israel that the woes that will fall on those Gentiles will also fall on his own audience. You can’t mock God. Judge for yourself:

Amos 5:12-24

12 For I know how many are your offenses
     and how great your sins.
There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes
     and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
13 Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times,
     for the times are evil.
14 Seek good, not evil,
     that you may live.
Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you,
     just as you say God is.
15 Hate evil, love good;
     maintain justice in the courts.
Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy
     on the remnant of Joseph.

16 Therefore this is what the Lord, the Lord God Almighty, says:
“There will be wailing in all the streets
     and cries of anguish in every public square.
The farmers will be summoned to weep
     and the mourners to wail.
17 There will be wailing in all the vineyards,
     for I will pass through your midst,”
says the Lord.

18 Woe to you who long
     for the day of the Lord!
Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
     That day will be darkness, not light.
19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion
     only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
     and rested his hand on the wall
     only to have a snake bite him.
20 Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—
     pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?

21 “I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
     your assemblies are a stench to me.
22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
     I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
     I will have no regard for them.
23 Away with the noise of your songs!
     I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24 But let justice roll on like a river,
     righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

I wonder if you were as struck as I was by the apparent condemnation of the praises commanded in David’s time and now banished from Amos’s gloomy vision. The God of Amos doesn’t appreciate their festivals and assemblies. “Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.” This seems to me to be clearly a different voice.

By the way, it does not scandalize me that the Bible has voices that don't always agree with each other. The Bible is much more credible to me with these awkward juxtapositions than it would be if some ancient public relations copy-editors had made sure that nothing odd stuck out at us from these sixty-six-plus books. The Bible was compiled by a mixed process of prayer and church politics, and the end product did not conceal the different sources and different points of view of the authors. I believe that the Scriptures are God-inspired, as Paul said to Timothy, but God’s inspiration acts in the assembly process as well as in the writing process, and takes full advantage of the varieties of human temperament.

Along with Amos’s impatience with pious sacrifices and praises, he has some interesting things to say about “the Day of the Lord.” Quakers have traditionally had two related interpretations of this phrase. One concerns the end of history, when the Lamb of God has the victory, when redemption rules, and the New Jerusalem is revealed. The other is our individual Day of the Lord, our Day of Visitation, our invitation to accept or reject God’s free offer of grace and redemption. Most early Quaker theologians assumed that this offer would be made to everyone, whether or not they had had outward access to the Christian gospel. In other words, culture and geography were not barriers to salvation. (See the quotation from Robert Barclay here.)

Amos paints the Day of the Lord with his usual gloomy colors. “Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord. Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?” This is Israel’s destiny if they do not give up the sin and injustice he spends nine chapters condemning. There is an alternative in these same verses: “Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say God is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.” This is the boundary line between Amos’s stern gloom and the promise of the New Jerusalem and its life of praise: We won’t just say God is with us, and assume that nothing needs to change, but we will wake up to the reality that following God has content and consequences, so that, if we have anything to do with it, justice will roll on like a river and righteousness like an everlasting stream.

What does that justice and righteousness look like? Here's a glimpse from George Fox’s experience of what he called the "restoration." (Page 27 of his Journal, Nickalls edition.)

Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell.

In case you think that Fox was referring to himself as a special case, he has some specific instances of what this will look like for everyone in the restoration—for example, specifically for men and women:

[Speaking to the men, now… same Journal, p. 667] 

And thy ruling over thy wife and eldership [over her] is in the Fall [that is, the capital-F Fall of Adam and Eve], for thou art in the transgression and not an elder in the image of God and righteousness and holiness, before transgression and the Fall was, nor in the restoration where they are helps-meet in the righteousness and image of God, and in the dominion over all that God made. …

And on p. 668,

I was moved of the Lord to recommend to Friends, for the benefit and advantage of the Church of Christ, that the faithful women who were called to the belief of the Truth, being made partakers of the same precious faith, and heirs of the same everlasting Gospel of life and salvation as the men are, might in like manner come into the possession and practice of the Gospel order, and therein be meet-helps unto the men in the restoration, in the service of Truth, in the affairs of the Church, as they are outwardly. That so all the family of God, in civil, or temporal things, women as well as men, might know, possess, perform, and discharge their offices and services in the house of God, whereby … all the members of the spiritual body, the Church, might watch over and be helpful to each other in love.

Fox has a fascinating understanding of what the Day of the Lord means here. At some time, the whole of creation will be like this, but we are not to wait! We ourselves are to go back through the flaming sword. When we ourselves experience all things being made new, and the creation giving forth a new smell, beyond what our words can utter, we will have a sense of what right praise is, and I predict that we will give way to it with great freedom and joy. The world is a long way from this New Jerusalem, and it may certainly be that our beloved, suffering planet will undergo a time of darkness as Amos predicted for Israel. (See "The long defeat, part one.") Darkness seems to be descending in various places even now. But at this very time, maybe it is given to us, and to faithful communities everywhere, to live out a discipleship of justice and righteousness, just as Amos said we might and must.

What does that discipleship look like in the community? What steps do we take so that, in George Fox’s words, “all the members of the spiritual body, the Church, might watch over and be helpful to each other in love”?

Eighteen years ago I taught a course in American studies at the New Humanities Institute in Elektrostal. The photo shows me in front of the class, with a diagram of the life cycle of a movement.

On the first day of the class, I gave my very oversimplified theory of history to the students: History is something like a constant debate between idealists and skeptics, or to put it another way, between optimists and cynics.

Whether it’s in the councils of state or in your typical church fights, they’re usually guaranteed to get on each other’s nerves. I think in the short run, skeptics usually win, but in the longer run, idealists have a fighting chance to prevail, if you’ll excuse the expression. In any case, when the idealists and the skeptics actually meet and converse, they have a real opportunity to bless each other. Each one, no matter how crazy or sensible, centrist or extreme, an ecstatic praise-giver or a gloomy prophet, is a child of God, and if they can, even for a moment, glimpse that of God in each other, they can move closer, together, to that river of justice and righteousness that, deep inside, both of them want.

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This blog post is partly based on a message I gave at Spokane Friends Meeting last spring.

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Two items from Facebook... Colin South, former director of the Ramallah Friends School, writes to the Israeli embassy in London and to the Israeli prime minister. And David Goode passed along this interesting item from Brian Drinkwine: little Charlies or little Christs?

Timothy Snyder on the virtues of a certain movie superhero. (I may have to see the film after all.)

Kristin Du Mez on life on the eve of finishing a book-length manuscript. (Includes some good links.)

"Walk in Beauty": Remarks by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at Fordham University last Tuesday.

In the courtyard of the high priest's house, Peter denies knowing Jesus but is unmasked by his own Galilean accent. In a classic post by our late friend Stan Thornburg, he wonders whether we Christians have lost our accent.

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Ever get this feeling? "No Rest." Chris O'Leary Band.

"Grandchildren are the crown of the aged..."

Your blogger as a brand new grandchild, in Oslo,
with his Oma and Opa, Emma and Paul Schmitz.

We can’t create a future fit for our grandchildren with systems built for our grandparents.
—António Guterres

Perhaps nothing is more predictable than politicians' sanctimoniously referring to the interests of "our grandchildren."
—Neil H. Buchanan

Grandchildren are the crown of the aged...
—from Proverbs 17:6.

It's not unusual for people to talk about grandchildren—now (with pictures) or in the future. I've been in such conversations. But I was brought up short the other day when a friend said, "I don't want grandchildren."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Just think. What kind of a world would they be born into?"

I'm embarrassed to admit that I've rarely considered these two things at the same time: what my actual family, friends, and neighbors, and their flesh and blood descendants, will experience, and the macro-scale trends forecast by our economists and ecologists—a future my contemporaries and I might or might not experience firsthand, but what we might reasonably anticipate for our children's children.

Politicians naturally might want us to believe that, with our support, they will help shape that future into a better direction. But I have some questions for them/us:

• Will your recommendations benefit some children ("our" children) more than others? If so, what will happen when those other children catch on to your game? And will our children welcome this bias and be infected by your cynicism, or will they be repelled in favor of a more universal blessing?
• How will you know when disastrous ecological changes approach a tipping point beyond which we cannot risk going? What risks of miscalculation are you willing to take? When are you going to go public with your own private realization that we have been postponing a true reckoning too long?
• When will the dismantling of our (U.S.) constitutional structures and norms reach a similar tipping point? How will you know? How are you responding?
• In any realm—political, ecological, economic, or the places where all three merge—can you envision joining a coalition of hope and change of a sufficient scale that it would compensate you for abandoning your personal dreams of political success—a success that honesty might well threaten?
• Will you identify, join, or help build such a coalition? Will I?

If by some microscopic chance, our generation's grandchildren see this, my question to them is: well, how did we do?

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Related, sort of: Sowing in tears, part one, part two. The long defeat.

Political tipping point toolbox: The Federalist #51, "The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments."

Environmental Research Letters: Observations and cautions on using the term "tipping point."

Climate change outlook (science and politics) for 2025 and more generally. It seems that the planet itself is not in danger, but how far can we push its capacity to host complex life forms?

Hannah Bowman: ways for your church to take solidarity beyond sympathy.

Food for vision, from George Lakey: nonviolence vs dictators.

Indivisible: example of a current coalition. (Suggestions of others, and your criteria for supporting them, are welcome!)

Friends Committee on National Legislation, lobbying on behalf of Quakers in the USA since 1943.

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Revisiting George Lakey's writings, while assembling the list above, reminded me of the power of telling stories in advocating social justice. I still have vivid memories of Studs Terkel interviewing storyteller John Henry Faulk. (November 1, 1969.) I couldn't believe my ears! In fact, Faulk's argument from absurdity probably helped open me to genuine Christianity, as did the Christmas 1969 issue of Reader's Digest a month later. (I told that story here.)

Our old friend and colleague John Muhanji is giving a First Monday talk, April 7, at Pendle Hill in Pennsylvania. Contextualizing Quakerism to African Cultural, Social, and Spiritual Realities.

What is Lent, really? (Asking for a Friend!)

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Eve Monsees, "Number Nine Train."

"...Nature cannot be fooled"

North Sea sunset.

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Source.  

The dream is almost always the same. I'm out in the open country. There's a roar overhead, and I see a missile crossing the sky, and I instantly know it's carrying a nuclear warhead. It's on its way to a target somewhere behind me. I take off and run. There's a blinding flash and the dream ends.

Well, occasionally I manage to dive into a depression, feel the heat and shock pass by, shake off the dust, and realize that I've apparently survived. Then the dream ends.

I've continued to have these dreams since childhood. They're stored in my brain alongside memories of the Cuban missile crisis, air raid shelter signs, the air raid siren tests every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m., and classroom instructions on what to do during a nuclear attack. 

On March 26, 1970, our high school classes were canceled owing to a snowstorm, but I was already at school. One class had scheduled a viewing of the British pseudo-documentary The War Game, portraying a fictional nuclear attack on the UK. The teacher decided to offer a viewing to anyone interested. Not really wanting to trudge two and a half miles back home in the snow, I joined the audience, and got many more searing images for my apocalyptic dreams.

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We are not yet really free from the threat of nuclear warfare, but the shadow of another threat has become at least equally prominent in our times: global ecological catastrophe. The first threat may seem more vivid and immediate; some would argue that the second may be more inevitable in the long run. Has this second threat—climate change's worst scenarios—become our younger generations' version of nuclear dread?

Although both threats originate in a sort of shortsighted human arrogance, there are important differences between them. The decision to use nuclear weapons is in the hands of specific human beings who are, or should be, perfectly capable of choosing not to use them. (Of course I'm glossing over the possibilities of miscalculations, insanity, and equipment failures.) Nuclear war is not inevitable, whereas ecological degradation is already well underway. Human interventions to avoid catastrophe are possible at several points on the chart above ("Global warming and climate change"), and many scientists and activists have specified what those interventions should look like, but the track record of our species in acting at the required scale is not promising.

Sometimes I'm tempted to succumb to a doom mentality. For all we know, extinction might be inevitable no matter what we do. Countries and empires have come and gone, civilizations have perished, species have vanished. The planet itself will survive our misdeeds—as Richard Feynman reminded us in his famous appendix to the Rogers Commission investigation into the Challenger explosion, "... nature cannot be fooled." However, at some point even planets will vanish into their dying suns. Our loving Creator will archive us one way or another (I vote for "heaven"!) but, short of that, nothing about our long-term future is guaranteed.

Before I reject doom entirely (you knew I would, right?), I found this article in Scientific American intriguing: Beyond the Doom and Gloom, Here's How to Stimulate Climate Action, by Madalina Vlasceanu and Jay J. Van Bavel.

Not everyone is a fan of the doom and gloom messaging. Climate scientists like Michael Mann have warned against climate “doomerism,” messaging that can depress and demoralize the public, assuming that helplessness will simply lead to further climate inaction. And the title of a new book by Hannah Ritchie states clearly that it’s Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet.

There is, however, some evidence that doom and gloom messaging can spur climate action, as long as it falls on the right ears at the right time. For example, research has found that climate distress, climate anger and climate anxiety are all associated with increased climate action under some circumstances.

[Links in original]

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paper edition; digital edition

I'd like to recommend a better way. Cherice Bock, an environmental scientist and theologian, and Quaker minister, has an alternative vision—one that has two major advantages over the doom mentality. She describes this vision in her short, carefully organized and well-written book, A Quaker Ecology: Meditations on the Future of Friends. 

The advantages of her approach: 

First, her vision of an Eco-Reformation has great persuasive power. She anchors her vision in powerful biblical insights and the raw honesty of acknowledging the toxic effects of individualism, racism, and colonialism, even in our own Quaker histories. She writes beautifully about the healing effect of repentance and of reweaving ourselves into the ecology around us and within us through what she intriguingly calls "watershed discipleship." If a new, wider Reformation among people of faith adds to our united ability to reach the scales needed for crucial interventions, Cherice has made a valuable contribution toward that end.

Second, no matter how far we succeed in sharing this vision, no matter what the eventual outcome of our efforts to mitigate climate change might be, this is how we should live along the way. Cherice is blunt when she needs to be, but she personally models the power of honesty and a non-shaming repentance in describing, for example, the history of her own family on lands once inhabited by Indigenous nations. And her watershed awareness carries with it a sense of joy and embodiment.

Cherice subtitled her book, Meditations on the Future of Friends. Although I'm convinced that her theological and ecological insights have wide application beyond Quakers, the history and current state of Friends in the USA give an important context to her book—and give me a sense of positive urgency. As she says, "I was inspired by earlier generations of Friends; I want to be part of my own generation's faithfulness."

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Nancy Thomas looks at the patriarchs, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes ... and old age. "The tree or the insect."

This link is hard to post. Ashley Wilcox tells us that ALS is likely to keep her from reaching old age.

More ripples, via Meduza, from the death and burial of Aleksei Navalny. Shura Burtin cautions us against unrealistic faith in the "beautiful Russia of the future." On the other hand, here is a Russian university instructor who is tired of being afraid.

The documentary film Butterfly in the Sky celebrates the legacy of the long-running television show Reading Rainbow, which I remember watching with our kids. Here's the trailer and context. (Thanks to Lithub.com for the link.)

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Michelle Birkballe (Denmark) covers Solomon Burke's classic "Cry to Me." (Link to Burke's original.)

Weighing the true cost of travel ... how do you decide?

Before I get to this week's post, have you seen my latest survey? I'd like to know whether you prefer the term "Quaker" or the term "Friend"—or maybe "it depends." The survey is here:  blog.canyoubelieve.me/p/survey.html; please share it widely if you too are curious. Many thanks to everyone who has already responded.

An episode of the sitcom Frasier from 1996: It's February 29, a beautiful day in Seattle, 80 degrees F., and Frasier Crane says, "It defies you not to take a moment to acknowledge the power that created it." His father says, "Thank you, global warming."

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We are called to be patterns and examples in a 21st century campaign for peace and ecojustice, as difficult and decisive as the 18th and 19th century drive to abolish slavery.

— Kabarak Call for Peace and Eco-Justice, Sixth World Conference of Friends, Kenya, 2012.

This past Saturday, Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends met for its fall gathering at Eugene Friends Church. One of the items on our agenda was our participation in the Friends World Committee for Consultation's World Plenary Meeting in South Africa next August. Each yearly meeting may appoint one representative to participate in person. (In addition, there will be capacity for many Friends to participate online.) Whom would we send?

I followed the ensuing discussion carefully, not just because I was serving as one of the recording clerks, but also because similar discussions must be happening all over the world. Conscientious members of geographically widespread organizations have serious choices to make: weighing the decision to continue our patterns of carbon-fueled travel to conferences at a time when, as one Friend  pointed out in our discussion, the pollution generated by air travel goes directly into the atmosphere. She added, bluntly, "Our planet's carbon budget is exhausted. There has to be a point where Friends say, 'We can't participate in this destruction anymore'."

She went on to add that we do have a choice. When we choose to make an environmentally costly trip by air, we can also commit to disciplines that compensate, such as a drastic limitation of other travel, or becoming vegetarian, or abandoning carbon-fueled vehicles in favor of walking, bicycling, or mass transit.

Much of the remaining discussion centered on the question of how we decide: in any specific case, how do we balance the unique blessings of personal attendance with the cost of such attendance when we've apparently already used up our planet's carbon safety margin? This is my question to you: how has your organization handled this dilemma? Have you adopted any guidance that you could share with other Friends (and anyone else facing this question)?

Among the reflections that arose during this business session:

• A Friend told of the life-changing impact on him of attending the 2005 World Gathering of Young Friends and asked us to prioritize young people in making choices of participants.
• Another Friend wanted to know what consideration Friends World Committee for Consultation itself had given to this question. We were told that the environmental cost of travel had led to several FWCC decisions: first, to abandon the triennial cycle (that had been in place when I worked for FWCC) in favor of gathering every seven or eight years; second, to reduce in-person attendance to one person per yearly meeting plus a limited number of at-large places; third, to promote the idea of local "hubs" where people would gather from convenient distances to participate together online.
  
  
  
  (I had a personal experience of an earlier FWCC attempt to reduce travel. The 1991 World Gathering of Friends took place on three different sites: Honduras, Kenya, and the Netherlands. I helped staff the Honduras site, and used the opportunity to visit Right Sharing of World Resources work in Honduras.)
• Another Friend asked us to consider the cost of forgoing opportunities to meet face to face with people whose views are different. When conflicts arise from lack of contact across divisions, this too can have environmental costs.
• A proposal: Are there Friends among us who will be attending the World Plenary in any case because of their staff or committee work, and could we choose one of these Friends to be our in-person representative?

We concluded the discussion without making a decision regarding the appointment of an in-person representative. Instead, we asked concerned Friends to gather the additional information we might need to make a good decision, and publish that information in our Yearly Meeting's Bulletin. It is not too late to send us your experiences and advice!

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The calculations you may need in order to plan reductions in your carbon-based energy usage.

Carbon reduction advice.

FWCC's sustainability page.

Sustainability: personal witness.

How does war damage the environment?

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Michael T. Cooper on claims to sacred lands: the cases of Lakota/Black Hills, Contemporary Druids/Stonehenge ... and the Israeli nation-state. (Part one.)

Jeremy Morris on pogroms (specifically the recent one at Makhachkala's airport), social psychology, and the falsity of numbers.

Mark Pratt-Russum on holding change.

Perhaps, the real work is confronting the finish lines we’ve created. Audre Lorde said, “The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.”

Micky ScottBey Jones follows up that quote with this simple reminder, “Doing the work reveals more of the work to be done in us.”

Greg Morgan: no, you really don't know what it's like.

Tricia Gates Brown: In peace and war, why quiet listening is important action.

What made Geoffrey Durham stay, after his first experiences of Friends?

It’s worth remembering that a person who comes with a deep spiritual hunger is primarily interested in whether Quakers might be able to help them. There will almost certainly be an urgency to their visit: will they find support here, or won’t they? And so being told about events in, say, 1652 is unlikely to be of much assistance. We need to be careful of sending our enquirers too swiftly out of the door.

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Marcella Simien sings a classic Otis Redding song, "These Arms of Mine." (Redding's version.)

Yearly meetings, myth and reality, part two

Yearly Meeting: a definition (adapted from quakerinfo.org) Yearly Meeting refers to a larger body of Friends, consisting of monthly meetings (or local congregations) in a general geographic area connected with the same branch of Friends. This body holds decision making sessions annually. The term "yearly meeting" may refer to the annual sessions, to the body of members, or to the organizational entity that serves the body of members. For most purposes, a yearly meeting is as high as Quaker organizational structure goes. Each of the 30+ yearly meetings in the U.S. has its own Faith and Practice, and there is no higher authority in the structure of the Religious Society of Friends, although yearly meetings network with each other through branch associations and other Friends organizations. [Also see Margery Post Abbott's definition in The Historical Dictionary of the Friends (Quakers).]

Once upon a time, I was a Quaker denominational leader, emotionally invested in our structures and their missions. One weekend, I was visiting a Friends church in an evangelical yearly meeting. I stayed with a delightful family in the city where the yearly meeting's office was located, and I went with them to their Sunday morning meeting for worship.

The church was impressive, both in the size of its building and the breadth of its programming. Aside from the variety of Sunday morning options for all ages, there were programs for every day of the week, ranging from Bible studies to family finance seminars to Christian aerobics.

My hosts were very knowledgeable about these programs, which clearly had become a social and spiritual base for their family. They gently let me know, however, that they had never heard of my organization. As it turned out, they also knew nothing about their own yearly meeting or any of its wider affiliations, even though the yearly meeting office was in their own city. The word "Friends" meant little to them beyond the fact that it was in their church's name, and the word "Quaker" even less.

However, their Friends church gave substantial resources to that yearly meeting and its affiliates, in both money and people.

I thought about this visit, now a quarter century ago, during a recent committee meeting. We were considering how our own yearly meeting, Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends, could be of greater service to local Friends and their churches. In particular, how can we encourage the gifts of ministry among those local Friends emerge and flourish and be recognized?

There is arguably nothing wrong or "incomplete" about an individual Friend or family that finds all the spiritual resources that they need in their local church and their local community, just as that host family did during my visit years ago. But I still can't shake off some of that emotional investment in our wider structures and missions.

Source: masthead of our yearly meeting's Bulletin.

I wish I had asked my hosts at the time how they pictured their place in their world faith family. They would probably have said that their church was simply a local group of believers in the worldwide evangelical Christian movement. In my institutional tendencies, I might have felt a bit wistful about the specifically Quaker emphasis in our part of that movement, but who am I to question their identity and enthusiasm? Or, for that matter, in their apparent lack of interest in the intermediary structures for which their church was paying?

Now I'm thinking about the differences between the church I was visiting at the time, and the typical churches of our own yearly meeting. None of them have the resources of that seven-day-a-week church. Few if any are equipped to surround attenders and their families with such full-service programming. What can or should we as a yearly meeting do to strengthen our local congregations in their capacity to meet needs? Can we in fact affirm the advantages of a small-scale model of church (with its simplicity, intimacy, lack of hierarchy) by supplementing its programs, providing low-key mutual accountability, and helping identify potential leaders?

More than that: is it a legitimate aspiration for a Quaker yearly meeting to encourage Friends to say something like this...?

My Friends church is a local expression of something larger, a worldwide Quaker movement with a particular experience of Christian discipleship.

Furthermore, by belonging to this movement through my participation in this local church, I'm contributing toward this movement at a time in world history when this discipleship—with its practices of peace, equality, simplicity, and decisionmaking based on the discernment of the community—is needed to create hope and break bondages.

Does such a statement makes sense? Why or why not? (Or is it the wishful thinking of someone who yearns for the traditional structures and missions?)

If so, could it be affirmed by those who are eager to give their time to these wider relationships, such as the yearly meeting and its committees and affiliations, and equally to those whose focus remains local but whose awareness may, at one and the same time, be wider?

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As I reflected on all these questions, I thought about my own history with Friends. As a college student who'd recently experienced a Christian conversion, I looked for Friends because I already knew that, with my inherited distrust of the religion industry, the simplicity of Friends as I'd read about them would be the most direct way for me to build upon my new faith. So, when I first stepped into Ottawa Friends Meeting in 1974, I already had that wider context, however superficially I might have understood it.

To my great fortune, Ottawa Friends had a wealth of mentors who were able to feed my hunger and my curiosity. Within months I was on a local committee; within two years I was sent to an international Friends conference with life-changing consequences for me. Around the same time I was appointed to a Canadian Yearly Meeting board that gave out grants from an endowment. Five years after that I was appointed as a Canadian member of the governing body of Friends United Meeting.

Shortly after the international conference, in that summer of 1976, I attended Canadian Yearly Meeting sessions for the first time. The presiding clerk of Canadian Yearly Meeting, Philip Martin, was a member of Ottawa Friends Meeting and was, therefore, someone I already knew and respected. One of the discussions at the center of the business meeting that year was about the formal importance of membership in Friends—a question that continues to arise among us to this day.

Given these early experiences that came to me through the care and mentorship of my meeting, without effort of my own, it's no coincidence that I see my membership at Camas Friends Church as being linked to a whole concentric series of wider Quaker networks, all supporting me as I try to work out the consequences of Christian faith in these times. It's my story, but it's not everyone's story, and so I continue to wonder: how will these wider engagements earn the attention of new and young Friends whose stories differ from mine, and whose lives are already full and demanding?

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Some background from earlier posts:

Yearly meeting, myth and reality

Does the theory of the concentric Friends structure, with its simplicity and lack of hierarchy, still have power for Friends? In this structure, the local Friends meeting or church is the inner circle. It is where we know each other best, exercise hospitality to newcomers, and learn to ask, "What does God want to do or say through us?" It's where people are born, marry, die; it's where we witness new believers crossing the threshold into the household of faith.

By appointment or interest or both (depending in part on the local culture), some of those local Friends report to and from the next concentric circle, traditionally the monthly or quarterly meeting, then the yearly meeting, then the larger associations to which this yearly meeting is affiliated. Most local Friends probably won't be interested or called to serve in these wider circles, and that's no problem as long as the connections are rotated and renewed often enough to keep the relationships real.

"Becoming the church we dreamed of" part two

In some cases, maybe we've over-bureaucratized yearly meetings and routinized business rather than expecting our gatherings to serve as the forum where we ask each other whether Truth is prospering in each of our local settings, and how we need to coordinate with each other to meet the needs in places where our testimonies are being challenged. As we consider a world full of spiritual, social, and economic bondage, are we too busy maintaining our systems to consider these challenges creatively? Can we make room for new partnerships between the old yearly meeting-as-forum and new initiatives? Two generations ago, such partnerships included the New Call to Peacemaking and Right Sharing of World Resources. What are today's experiments in partnership?

I have heard of a couple of yearly meetings that have experimented with a radically simplified agenda—if only for one annual session. How did it go? I was present for one such experiment, a carefully planned session of Iowa Yearly Meeting FUM at which most routine business was set aside to consider whether to remain in Friends United Meeting. This example was a response to a specific crisis, but maybe at another time and place, the sheer urgency of focusing on the needs of people who have never heard of us would be "crisis" enough.

The Iowa example brings up another huge problem: local Friends have come to associate "yearly meeting" (the annual gathering as well as the ongoing structure) with conflict and church politics. I've heard this complaint in many places. We might be too busy arguing instead of figuring out together how to build our prophetic and healing presence in the world. We desperately need to restore the ability to extract value from conflicts and diversity instead of hiding or suppressing them.

...

I'm not ready to give up on the yearly meeting as an institution worth preserving and re-energizing. The simplicity of the concentric structure has a huge advantage, as long as its processes are prayer-driven and transparent. A yearly meeting serves as a clear and constant and public access point into the web of relationships that is the Quaker family beyond the local church.

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Friends World Committee for Consultation offers World Quaker Day (October 1) as one way to spotlight our global family.

Judy Maurer's interview with Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist of the Alaska Native Sisterhood. "My story is not unique. It can be told all across Indian country...."

One of the rabbit trails I happily hopped along while writing this post: a history of Grindstone Island, a Canadian experiment in training for nonviolence.

Stan Cox at Tomdispatch: Young Montanans fight climate change for all of us. (Also see Tom Engelhardt on a global Maui moment.)

Pyotr Sauer in The Guardian: Konstantin Dobrovolski has spent decades locating bodies of Soviet soldiers who died in World War II, and attempting to ensure their proper identification and burial.

“Every day I am confronted with the grim consequences of war. But it seems like our nation didn’t learn the right lesson from history,” [Dobrovolski] said as the conversation quickly turned to the war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, on the home front, some Russian parents try to shield their schoolchildren from pro-war propaganda.

Friends Committee on National Legislation offers an online program on September 21: Repairing the wounds of war: Nonviolent Peaceforce in Ukraine.

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Dusty Brown plays Jimmy Reed's "Honest I Do."

A Right Sharing reunion, part two

Phanice Kenyorwa, Keyo Friends Women Group, Kenya (Right Sharing partners). Photo courtesy RSWR.

Of Phanice Kenyorwa's eight children, four are still living at home. She has 6 grandchildren also under her care. Phanice has a husband who is older and cannot work. He once worked as a butcher, but he became diabetic and can't work anymore. Reasons why she chose goat rearing for her business: Phanice ventured into goat rearing and selling because of advice from her husband as well as high demand of goat meat at the butchery where her husband once worked. Together with that, she does some farming of indigenous vegetables. She is so confident of her business because her own children help her to graze the goats and therefore it saves on labor.The business has helped Phanice to renovate their house which was leaking and also to put food on the table.

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Grace Akaranga, chair lady of Keyo Friends Women Group, in her village shop. Photo courtesy RSWR.

Anne Jahenda at Kapkereri local market. Photo courtesy RSWR. Jackie Stillwell, general secretary, RSWR (right), with Judy and me at Britain Yearly Meeting 2023. Photo courtesy Jackie Stillwell.

It's very hard for me to believe it, but it has been thirty years since I ended my service with Right Sharing of World Resources. To all appearances, the program is flourishing. I can't help wanting to know, how has it changed over the decades?

This may not be the most important answer, but for one thing, it's an independent Quaker program. My service with Right Sharing (1986-1993) was part of my responsibilities as a field staffer with Friends World Committee for Consultation, Section of the Americas. 

When Right Sharing was a new vision for global economic justice via "right sharing" of our resources (at least "one percent more" from individuals and nations alike), that affiliation with FWCC provided a trustworthy anchor in the Quaker constellation of organizations, open to participation by all Friends of whatever location or theology. It was also an economical way of managing a program of its small size. However, as it grew to become one of the largest units of FWCC in terms of finances, it threatened to pull resources from the wider FWCC mission.

It was also a bit of a category mismatch. As Indianapolis First Friends pastor Lorton Heusel pointed out to me at the start of my service, Right Sharing was an action-oriented program devoted to development and economic justice, while FWCC as a whole was devoted to communication and consultation across the Quaker world. Wouldn't that confuse some audiences?

As the program became larger, some Right Sharing donors resented paying a small percentage toward FWCC's administrative costs, although without that administration, there would have been no program. All in all, when Right Sharing became independent a few years after my departure, the new arrangement made a lot of sense, and I very much enjoyed my term on the new trustees, with the late, much-missed Roland Kreager as the Right Sharing coordinator.

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A couple of years ago, I reported on a reunion of Right Sharing trustees. That meeting answered a lot of my questions about what had changed and what had remained of the "old" Right Sharing. 

A few months ago Right Sharing held another such meeting of current and former trustees. Among the highlights this time was the addition of a fourth country—Guatemala—to the three countries where Right Sharing's partners were then located: India, Sierra Leone, Kenya. In each of these four countries there are Right Sharing coordinators and trainers. One of them, I'm delighted to say, was a familiar face from my time on the staff: Dr. R. Kannan. His work with local nongovernmental organizations and grassroots groups may have been Right Sharing's very first experiences with what is now standard practice: providing local assistance, training, and evaluation services for new and potential partner groups.

One of our romantic notions in the early years of Right Sharing was that somehow we could form meaningful partnerships simply based on informal visitations by Quaker travelers and Quaker volunteers in the Peace Corps, and similar improvisations. Also, somehow the groups we worked with would already know how to write an attractive proposal (without paying to copy someone else's successful proposal, and without feeling forced to parrot the jargon already proven to be attractive to Western donors), and would also, without further help, be able to receive and account for a chunk of new money. Kannan began to show how these relationships could be made more meaningful and secure, to the benefit of everyone involved.

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What does all this look like in practice? I'm very thankful to Sarah Northrop, RSWR's program director, for telling me about one specific community partner, the Keyo Friends Women Group in Vihiga county, Kenya, as a case study of today's Right Sharing. Sarah writes:

Development of Keyo Friends Women Group and its partnership with Right Sharing of World Resources

In Kenya, it is common for women to come together as a group. There are church groups, groups of women who work together, community groups, groups formed around an interest, etc. In many of these groups, women practice “merry-go-round”. At each meeting, each woman puts a specified amount of money into a pot and it is given to one woman - usually the woman who is hosting the meeting that day. The person who receives the pot rotates through all of the members and then it starts over again. This practice of merry-go-round binds the women together and the money itself is useful to pay for big expenses such as school fees or holiday celebrations.

Keyo Friends Women Group was started as a United Society of Friends Women group of Keyo Friends Church in 2015. It was established as a prayer and support group, but they practiced merry-go-round banking also. As in much of rural Kenya, all of the women of Keyo Friends were struggling economically. Their main source of livelihood came from their small farming plots, but over the years, the plots had gotten smaller and smaller as they were divided among all the male heirs in a family, and much of land was sold to large tea and sugarcane farming enterprises. By 2015, the farm plots were no longer able to feed the families and women all over rural Kenya were looking for another way to support their families.

The Keyo group decided to invite a government Social Services officer to teach them how to do table banking so that they could establish a group revolving loan fund to support personal small businesses. Table Banking is similar to merry-go-round, but the money the women put in is not returned to them. It is kept in the group treasury and women who want to start a business can take a loan from the treasury to have capital for the businesses. When the loans are repaid with interest, the group table banking fund is further augmented. The government of Kenya, through their Social Service department, has a program that encourages women groups to start table banking and small-scale enterprises.

Sometime in 2016 or 2017, some of the women from the Keyo group went to a USFW conference where Samson Ababu made a presentation about Right Sharing of World Resources. The Right Sharing program offers women groups a much larger capital fund than they can save on their own and also provides training and support to the groups. The Keyo women asked Samson to come and speak more about RSWR to their group. Afterwards, they decided to become part of the Right Sharing program. They received training in group dynamics and were assisted to register their group and put into place procedures to ensure that the group was run fairly and democratically.

When they sent their application for a grant in the fall of 2018, the RSWR Country Coordinators ranked them highly and commented that the group was a mixture of many different tribes who were working well together and that they were actively trying to overcome the poverty that they found themselves in. Their grant was approved by the RSWR board and they received the funds in January of 2019. Since that time, the group has gone through many hardships and struggles, including Covid-19 and extremely high inflation in Kenya. However, they have stuck together and are still working hard to improve their lives. Their RSWR revolving loan fund is still intact and it continues to help them keep their businesses going and even grow the businesses which are now their main source of livelihood. All 30 of the original women are still active members and 5 new women have joined the group.

Source.  

Sarah Northrop is the Program Director for Right Sharing of World Resources. A graduate of Earlham College and a member of West Richmond Friends in Richmond, Indiana, Sarah has worked at RSWR since 2007, first as Assistant to the Program Director and as Program Director since 2013. Sarah’s job includes liaising with RSWR Country Coordinators in our four countries, preparing information on projects and overseas partners for board, staff and donors, receiving and processing reports and other communications from our partner NGOs and women groups, and maintaining the database of RSWR past and present projects. Sarah works from her home in Chelem, in the state of Yucatán, Mexico.

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When I was the Right Sharing coordinator, working from home in Richmond, Indiana, and then Wilmington, Ohio, with at most one part-time staffer working alongside me, and no permanent staff anywhere else, it was a point of pride (and of our fundraising!) that we operated a lean organization and could plow most income directly into grants to partners.

Actually, it was misplaced pride. A significant part of Right Sharing's budget now pays for training and preparation to make the partnerships more sustainable in the long run, and to make the relationships far more real. In my own time, I might have worried that donors wouldn't understand how important it was that this intermediary role be funded, but it seems as if donors do understand. Not only do those coordinators and trainers add integrity to the relationships, they also serve the goal of shifting the emphasis of Right Sharing from funders' decisionmaking in favor of partners' experience and initiative.

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A selection of links to Right Sharing history (some of these were also in part one).

• The origins of Right Sharing as a Friends World Conference concern (The Friend, 1967)
• Jennifer Haines, "The Spirit Which Queries" (Friends Journal, 1976) (for more on Jennifer Haines, also see here.)
• Jennifer Haines, "Contemporary Queries on the Spiritual Basis for Right Sharing" (Evangelical Friend, 1977)
• Elizabeth Moen, "Right Sharing in India" (Friends Journal, 1985)
• Carol Reilley Urner's Pendle Hill Pamphlet The Needle's Eye (1987)
• My article for Quaker Life, "Sowing Seeds of Change" (1989)
• My article for Hunger Notes, "Experiences of a Small-Scale Funder" (1993)

And for more recent history, Right Sharing newsletter archives back to 2016.

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Jacob Meador on why Americans really stopped going to church.

The theologian Stanley Hauerwas captured the problem well when he said that “pastoral care has become obsessed with the personal wounds of people in advanced industrial societies who have discovered that their lives lack meaning.” The difficulty is that many of the wounds and aches provoked by our current order aren’t of a sort that can be managed or life-hacked away. They are resolved only by changing one’s life, by becoming a radically different sort of person belonging to a radically different sort of community.

Are churchgoers more likely to see life as exciting?

Pastor Sean Muldowny on pastoring in the Trump era. (Via Kristin Du Mez.)

Jeremy Morris considers what we're learning from the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin. "...[A]mbiguity over the sources and reasons for violence are useful to the Putin regime."

Beth Felker Jones offers a prayer for back to school.

Frida Berrigan on facing a world that has become an oven. In large ways and small, we need to reinvent ourselves.

Micah Bales on what happens when the Holy Spirit tweaks a sermon.

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For blues dessert, here's a rerun especially sent out to our former students. Hans Theessink, "Walking the Dog."

George Fox: a fresh encounter

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The creation was opened to me, and it was showed me how all things had their names given them according to their nature and virtue. And I was at a stand in my mind whether I should practise physic for the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues of the creatures were so opened to me by the Lord.

-- George Fox, Journal, recalling his early years in ministry.

In this passage, from the second chapter of George Fox's Journal, young Fox is describing what it was like in the years 1646-48 (he was born in 1624) to be propelled by God to shake the countryside -- and particularly the established churches -- by the power and fire of God's work inside him. For a moment, he was "at a stand" in his mind, uncertain whether he should "practise physic," become a physician, as his contribution to humanity.

I'm reading these pages very closely right now because once again I have the exciting task of editing a section of the Russian translation of Fox's Journal. The translation I'm working with is excellent, with much sensitivity to early Quaker spirituality and passion, conveyed in a lovely, spare Russian style that reflects the 17th-century English original while staying clear and comprehensible to a contemporary Russian reader. The text is simply a joy to work with. My own contribution is to look for and help with such expressions as "at a stand" and "physic" whose 17th-century meanings aren't obvious to a translator. They are not always obvious to me, either, which is why I have to work with at least four dictionaries, including an online King James Bible dictionary, a dictionary of Shakespeare's English usage, and a Russian-language thesaurus, as I crawl slowly through the text.

Some of Fox's references in those years need historical context for the most accurate translation, and I'm not an experienced enough translator to offer an expert judgment. For example, "... I was moved to go to Leicester, and when I came there I heard of a great meeting for a dispute and that there were many to preach, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and Common-prayer-men." How should we translate "Common-prayer-men"? A literal translation in Russian would be clunky; maybe it would be better simply to say "Anglicans." At first I thought the word Anglican was of a later vintage, but apparently it was already in use by 1635. Still, simply saying "Anglican" would ignore the political situation swirling around the Book of Common Prayer during the reign of Charles I -- a situation that Fox probably took for granted as being familiar to his readers. In the year 2022 is it best simply to refer to that controversy in a footnote, or perhaps leave it out altogether as being secondary in importance in Fox's larger narrative? (NOTE: You are welcome to comment!)

Translating the word "virtue" in the first passage above was another interesting moment, one more directly linked to Fox's spiritual exercises in those years. A few pages after he reports thinking about taking up "physic," he discourses more widely on

...those three great professions in the world, physic, divinity (so called), and law. And [God] showed me that the physicians were out of the wisdom of God by which the creatures were made, and so knew not the virtues of the creatures, because they were out of the Word of wisdom by which they were made.

The first translation of "virtue" in Russian was equivalent to "dignity," "worth," but 17th-century English also used "virtues" to mean "qualities," "characteristics," "essence" -- which, unlike the doctors whom Fox accused of being out of the wisdom of God, he himself claimed to have learned about through direct revelation! 

These kinds of audacious claims are repeated over and over in George Fox's Journal. The second chapter in particular is densely packed with exuberant and ecstatic discoveries and proclamations, presented (if it were possible) with a paradoxical mix of assertiveness and tenderness. In short order he cuts through any restraints of formality and humility: (My italics, marking places of particular audacity, as it seems to me...)

And they were discoursing of the blood of Christ; and as they were discoursing of it, I saw, through the immediate opening of the invisible Spirit, the blood of Christ. And I cried out among them, and said, Do ye not see the blood of Christ? see it in your hearts, to sprinkle your hearts and consciences from dead works to serve the living God? for I saw it, the blood of the New Covenant, how it came into the heart. This startled the professors [another interesting word to translate!], who would have the blood only without them and not in them.

Now the Lord God hath opened to me by his invisible power how that every man was enlightened by the divine light of Christ; and I saw it shine through all, and that they that believed in it came out of condemnation and came to the light of life and became the children of it, but they that hated it, and did not believe in it, were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ. This I saw in the pure openings of the Light without the help of any man, neither did I then know where to find it in the Scriptures; though afterwards, searching the Scriptures, I found it.  For I saw in that Light and Spirit which was before Scripture was given forth, and which led the holy men of God to give them forth, that all must come to that Spirit, if they would know God, or Christ, or the Scriptures aright, which they that gave them forth were led and taught by.

Now I was sent to turn people from darkness to the light that they might receive Christ Jesus, for to as many as should receive him in his light, I saw that he would give power to become the sons [sic] of God, which I had obtained by receiving Christ. And I was to direct people to the Spirit that gave forth the Scriptures, by which they might be led into all Truth, and so up to Christ and God, as they had been who gave them forth. And I was to turn them to the grace of God, and to the Truth in the heart, which came by Jesus, that by this grace they might be taught, which would bring them into salvation, that their hearts might be established by it, and their words might be seasoned, and all might come to know their salvation nigh. For I saw that Christ had died for all ... and was a propitiation for all, and had enlightened all men and women with his divine and saving light, and that none could be a true believer but who believed in it. I saw that the grace of God, which brings salvation, had appeared to all men, and that the manifestation of the Spirit of God was given to every man to profit withal. These things I did not see by the help of man, nor by the letter, though they are written in the letter, but I saw them in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by his immediate Spirit and power, as did the holy men of God, by whom the Holy Scriptures were written. Yet I had no slight esteem of the Holy Scriptures, but they were very precious to me, for I was in that spirit by which they were given forth, and what the Lord opened in me I afterwards found was agreeable to them. I could speak much of these things and many volumes might be written, but all would prove too short to set forth the infinite love, wisdom, and power of God, in preparing, fitting, and furnishing me for the service he had appointed me to; letting me see the depths of Satan on the one hand, and opening to me, on the other hand, the divine mysteries of his own everlasting kingdom.

Moreover when the Lord sent me forth into the world, he forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low; was required to thee and thou all men and women, without any respect to rich or poor, great or small. And as I travelled up and down, I was not to bid people good morrow or good evening, neither might I bow or scrape with my leg to any one; and this made the sects and professions to rage. But the Lord’s power carried me over all to his glory, and many came to be turned to God in a little time, for the heavenly day of the Lord sprang from on high, and brake forth apace, by the light of which many came to see where they were.

Now all of this I'd read decades ago, when I was a new Quaker, but in these intervening years I've mostly read serviceable snippets here and there. This task of editing the Russian translation has brought me face to face once again with this unapologetically bold witness and his raw testimony. What am I to do with him? How is he a model or measure for the Friends movement today ... now that we Friends (whatever our conceits) have by and large become part of the establishment?

Do we have among us -- do we endure among us -- those who might make such bold claims ...

... to be empowered with God's message to the same degree as the original writers of Scripture?

... to be perfectly redeemed from temptation?

... to lead people into the same place where he was, so that they could have the same access to God's spirit that he claimed to have?

This last point might be the most important, because (as Geoffrey Nuttall* points out in his introduction to the Nickalls edition of the Journal that I am using) Fox claimed no unique power, status, or ability, "no special grace for himself, no gift that was not for all ... to receive who would." Ultimately, I have to ask myself, do his words echo in me so warmly because I too have the capacity to be a witness to God's primordial work within? And if I resist this implication, if I and we as a Quaker church succeed in putting Fox in a well-insulated box labeled "our fascinating and eccentric founder," what might I (we) lose of the urgent mission that Fox gave us 375 years ago?

*Error in original post: I gave editor John Nickalls credit for the introduction, which was written by Geoffrey Nuttall.

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Related: previous translation editing projects ...

Katharine Evans and Sarah Chevers

Sarah Jones

Robert Barclay

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A Benedictine monastic community reflects on two years without guests.

Oregon Interfaith Earth Summit in three days!

Why Duncan Edward Pile is almost a universalist.

Learning what being a "foreigner" is like by ... being a foreigner.

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Konstantin Kolesnichenko: Blues from Dnipro, Ukraine. 

Book shorts

Three books have recently lit up my life, each in its own way. You've probably already heard of them, but if my recommendations make the difference for you, I'd be very pleased! The three books:

• Lydia Millet, A Children's Bible
• Gish Jen, The Resisters
• Francis Spufford, Light Perpetual

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Source.  

The first Lydia Millet novel I ever read, How the Dead Dream (which I wrote about here), astounded me with her ability to peel away the insulation provided by affluence, technology, and force of habit, that separates us from raw nature with all its implacable, unsentimental, often hazardous (to us) realities. It is possible that Millet is one of the writers who can finally penetrate our collective complacency about global warming.

If this is true, it's not because she's writing propagandistic "cause" literature. The hurricane that sets up the unfolding catastrophes in her recent novel A Children's Bible is just one of the factors in the novel's drama, although it is the factor that links her characters' objective situation with ours. In an entirely plausible but only gently implied chain of events, the novel's hurricane might be the straw that breaks the camel's back, triggering what looks like a far wider collapse of political and social structures.

In her story, the hurricane interrupts a group of families who've rented a beach house for their summer vacation. The parents occupy the mansion's bedrooms, and the children are consigned to the attic. It's those children who drive the narrative; they have to take the initiative for their own activities, and not only that, but their own well-being, because the adults are too clueless and too busy boozing to take much notice of their kids. In a remarkable commentary on generational relationships, most of the teenagers take part in a game that requires not revealing one's own parents' identity to the other kids, while seeking to unmask the other kids' parents. Just about everyone, it turns out, finds their parents too embarrassing to acknowledge.

The hurricane disrupts everything. The attic becomes uninhabitable, so the young people, already accustomed to problem-solving in the total absence of adult leadership, take shelter in a farm, only to be threatened by armed survivalists. They do get some unexpected adult allies ... but to say more would be to give too much away. The narrator, Evie, is one of the teenagers; her voice is alternately kind and mildly sardonic, but she has no special knowledge -- just an honest eye. 

A sample of the ways Jack interprets
Bible stories.

Concerning the novel's title: the narrator's younger brother loves the children's Bible he has received as a gift, interpreting its stories, parables, and miracles with a naive receptiveness and personal insights that have no connection whatever with conventional religiosity. The connections he makes between the Bible stories and science seem reasonable to me, especially given the lack of healthy intergenerational sharing. As Millet said in an interview,

My generation of adult — and those older than us who are still around — has failed, as a collective, to see ourselves as parents, even when we are parents. Real parents aren’t just producers of younger, newer beings. Producers of new life are simply breeders. Real parents are ancestors, who act out of a duty to the future of those under their care. Real parents are those who understand that the future has to be guarded, not only for their own children but for all who come after them. If we’re derelict in that duty — which we should take to be a sacred one — we may as well abandon the idea that we’re parents and admit we’re nothing more than breeders.

Millet says that she finished her novel before Greta Thunberg became famous, but I hear Thunberg in the voice of Jack, the younger brother who owns the children's Bible.

"Hey, Jack," said my father, trying to catch his eye in the rearview mirror. Summoned a smile that looked fake. And a jocular tone. "Chin up, kid. Everything's going to be OK!"

Jack switched his tablet off and flipped it over. Rested his hands on it, neatly folded together.

"That's what you always said," he said. His voice was still soft. "You're my father. But you're a liar."

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Gish Jen's novel, The Resisters, takes place in the future world that Lydia Millet's novel might be foreshadowing. Not only has global warming raised the sea level to an extent that much of the world's population must live on boats and rafts, but a combination of artificial intelligence, rising authoritarianism, and geopolitical power shifts has all but eliminated equal rights and due process.

The USA has become AutoAmerica, whose global competitor is ChinRussia. The heroes of Jen's novel are among AutoAmerica's more or less permanently marginalized Surplus population -- forced to be swamp- and sea-dwellers, and not allowed to work. They subsist instead on a form of welfare, and are constantly monitored to be sure they are making the right choices. ("You always have a choice," says the ever-present voice of authority.)

The privileged class, the Netters, live on dry land, as you've no doubt anticipated. Surplus and Netters alike are overseen by Aunt Nettie, an (almost) all-knowing combination of AI and the Internet. Aunt Nettie is not so rigid that it doesn't sometimes allow exceptional Surplus inhabitants to become Netters when it's to AutoAmerica's advantage -- and this is the situation when Gwen, the daughter of a Surplus couple (a former professor and a still active lawyer), turns out to have a phenomenal pitching arm. The family surreptitiously organizes a baseball league, and Gwen's success in that supposedly secret league comes to the notice of Aunt Nettie. AutoAmerica is desperate to win the baseball Olympics competition against ChinRussia, and the authorities are perfectly willing to make a deal to recruit a star player.

Much of the human drama of The Resisters concerns the dilemmas of knowing when to resist and when to compromise. For example, issues of betrayal and reconciliation become central when the Surplus realize that the existence of the secret baseball league has been betrayed by one of Gwen's own friends. Jen has sharpened these dilemmas by making Aunt Nettie and its functionaries not totally evil, even capable of flashes of humanity and humor. Is co-optation by the authorities always a betrayal? When are bargains permissible, and when do they undermine resistance to pervasive authoritarianism?

All of these are live questions for us as we face our own dilemmas of resistance in the cause of due process and equal rights. And all too soon, we may also have to decide: who gets to live on dry land?

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A successful fiction writer brings a set of characters to life. Lydia Millet's Evie and Gish Jen's Gwen were very real to me, and I'm grateful for allowing me to see the world through their eyes.

Francis Spufford created the five central characters of Light Perpetual, but also acknowledged that, because they were at the Woolworths in New Cross Road, Deptford, on November 25, 1944, when a German V2 missile made a direct hit on that store, their lives must necessarily have come to an end with all the other customers and staff killed in that tiny moment of time. 

(And for what? By the time Hitler's V2 vengeance weapons were being assembled, fueled, and crudely targeted at Allied cities such as London, his Thousand Year Reich had only six months left to live.)

At Woolworths on November 25, 168 very real people perished. Spufford gives his characters -- the schoolchildren Val, Jo, Alec, Vern, and Ben -- an alternate timeline, set in a fictional counterpart to New Cross Road. They stand for all the human possibilities abruptly cut off by that V2, whose metal nosecone must have made an appearance (as Spufford describes) for just a millisecond on its way down through the housewares department to its final impact point. But these five children were soon back at school, trying to answer a querulous headmaster's questions about the song they're singing.

Source.  

I admit I was skeptical at first that the novel's central device -- accompanying five supposed victims of November 25 through the lives that the missile should have taken from them -- would feel artificial. Spufford's creativity and humane purpose soon lifted that doubt from me, as he brought each one of them to life. We revisit each of them at five-year intervals, tracing a course through the social history of postwar England. (Alec, for example, becomes a newspaper typesetter, a profession gradually eliminated by technology. Val marries a white supremacist.) Spufford succeeds in making each of them believably ordinary but also very specific, very individual, at the same time. At the end, I was sorry to say goodbye to them. Their lives were by no means equally beautiful in any sense I'd recognize, but together they shine a defiant light on the preciousness of life and the cruel randomness of war.

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Why bombing unarmed civilians is always wrong.

The brutally clear Sixth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Washington Post's summary: "alarming and unsurprising."

What astronomers are learning from the huge rings around a black hole in the V404 Cygni system. Also, Einstein gets another boost from a black-hole observation.

... Then maybe you'll be in the mood for these seven Russian (and Soviet) sci-fi films. I was delighted to see Kin-dza-dza! on the list.

Is English a suitable language for poetry?

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Joanne Shaw Taylor, "I've Been Loving You Too Long" ...