Experiment with healing

As writers, Diana and John Lampen have an amazing ability to combine clarity, simplicity, practicality, on the one hand, and such sublime intangibles as mystery, joy, and beauty, on the other. This is certainly the case, to our immense gain, with their new book in the "Quaker Quicks" series, Inner Healing, Inner Peace: A Quaker Perspective.

In a way, the Lampens remind me of explorers—those remarkable people who have gone to distant and difficult places, to the polar regions, or deep underwater, or to the moon, with results that enriched our knowledge and our spiritual resources. Likewise, John and Diana, individually and together, have experienced a range of challenging situations that give them great credibility in talking about healing and peace.

They can speak from decades of experience with teenagers with emotional problems and long-termers in prisons, the urban warfare of "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland, the consequences of Chernobyl for a whole generation of children in Belarus, conflict in South Africa and Uganda, and many years of teaching nonviolent approaches to conflict in these settings and more.

There is, however, no heroic pose in their stories! Whether or not you have lived through similar dramatic settings, some of the most powerful stories told by John and Diana come from their own friends, families, colleagues, from those ground-level situations that happen anywhere to any of us: trauma, betrayal, resentment, anxiety, fear, and the ultimate fear of dying.

Among the obstacles to tranquillity are the unhealed hurts, wounds and scars within us. These may include bereavements, problems in our immediate relationships, or memories with which one cannot come to terms. One may try not to dwell on these thoughts, but they can force themselves on one’s attention, preventing people from relaxing or getting to sleep. We believe people need to find some peace within before they can respond effectively to their external problems—whether by taking action or by accepting or enduring them.

Diana and John at Pendle Hill, 2015; screenshot from source.

Here is the power and the joy of this book: the Lampens have taken these raw experiences, told candidly and tenderly, and have harvested spiritual practices from their Quaker faith and many kindred sources to open up ways of healing that people of all sorts of temperaments can use. After telling us these stories and outcomes, they distilled what they learned into a set of fourteen accessible practices. Many of these practices have a common thread: gently helping us to connect our minds, our spirits, and our bodies. 

Everywhere the Lampens ministered, they were teaching and learning at the same time. Here, for example, is one of the things they learned about habitual violence from the prisoners they worked with:

These prisoners explained to us that the initial response to a provocation was not anger; it was a feeling of humiliation, hurt, need or fear. This made them feel weak and vulnerable which they found hard to tolerate, so their brain flashed into anger mode, replacing the powerless feeling with a surge of strength. This enabled them to transfer the humiliation onto their opponent, who became the victim of the crime. We asked them whether there was a short time when they could have prevented this short-circuit into anger and violence. “Yes,” said one, “there was a moment, but it was as thin as a cigarette paper.”

This brief book is saturated with spiritual wisdom, from Jesus, George Fox, John Woolman, Isaac Penington, Rufus Jones, and others familiar to most Quakers, and also from Carl Jung, Patanjali, Dai-En Bannage (a Buddhist monastic), Thich Nhat Hanh, to name a few. Most of the explicit Quaker content will feel very congenial to unprogrammed Quakers of the tradition most familiar in the the U.K, and Ireland, but it doesn't all fit that category:

Unlike reconciliation, forgiveness does not depend on the other person showing remorse for the way they have treated us, though when this happens it can help us to forgive. Indeed, it does not even need the presence of the other; we can forgive the dead for hurts they have caused. One can rightly urge two parties to be reconciled; but no one has the right to say you must forgive, except “that of God” in yourself. A Rwandan Quaker pastor told us how he was leading his congregation in prayer when he felt God was saying to him, “I’m not listening to you—I’m not even here.” “Where are you, Lord?” “I’m in your house, comforting your wife after what you said to her before you came to church.” He immediately told the congregation to continue the service, while he went home to ask for her forgiveness. He added that this gave him insight into the general need to forgive and be forgiven after the terrible events in his country.

As you can see, the Lampens have not imposed doctrinal tests on the people and teachings of this book. Formal theology is not this book's focus. Nor do they deal directly with the politics behind some of the crises in which they served as healers and learners. As they say, other books in the "Quaker Quicks" series deal with some of these questions directly.

The temptation I face right now is simply to give you major chunks from this beautiful book, rather than imposing my own words. I hope I've given you enough reasons to get copies for yourself, and, best of all, explore the practices Diana and John have provided. The book ends with a carefully chosen list of references and further reading, including the Pendle Hill Pamphlet by John Yungblut that I recommended recently.

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Although I'd read books and articles by the Lampens before 2000 (I particularly remember John Lampen's Twenty Questions about Jesus), it was in that year that we first met them. They spent six weeks at our Friends meeting at the time, Reedwood Friends Church, as part of our Center for Christian Studies program that year. Among the gifts they gave us during their residency with us was Rex Ambler's "Experiment with Light" practice. The group that began then at Reedwood continues to this day.

Another network that the Lampens have drawn upon, with mutual benefit, is the Alternatives to Violence Project, mentioned several times in this book. Friends Peace Teams, whose Europe Group I serve on, also collaborates intensively with Alternatives to Violence.

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More about Friends Peace Teams in the latest issue of Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends newsletter.

Beth Allison Barr continues to consider complementarian theology. (And ... her students convinced her to see the movie Barbie.)

Heather Cox Richardson: When did the Republicans' "devil's bargain" begin?

Mark Pratt-Russum: Troublemaking as self-discovery.

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Sue Foley: "Queen Bee." Ottawa's Sue Foley has a unique ability to match voice and guitar.

When fear is a gift // a guest post

Judy Maurer is this week's writer. She is a recorded minister in the Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends.

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The college brochure said the campus was on a bluff overlooking the Rock River. It didn’t mention that just to the north of campus, also overlooking the bluff, was a steel foundry. Beyond that was a massive complex for the making of engines. The foundry belched clouds of sulphur across the campus every Wednesday afternoon. A friend who was allergic to eggs had to shut herself up in her room.

On other days, it was a nice campus, with classrooms and the library at one end and the dorms at the other end. Linking the two ends was one street of frat houses, largely unpopular and unpopulated. The college was innovative and international, and the town was small and leafy-green Wisconsin. Fresh from my senior year in high school in Barcelona, I was still deep in reverse culture-shock in the days when people didn’t recognize the problem. I thought I was the only one to feel so crazy. I only felt normal in my Spanish lit classes. I took as many as I could, and ended up with an accidental major in Spanish.

Source.  

Even as a new arrival on campus, I recognized the signs of danger. With the college classrooms, library and student union on one end of the campus, the walk from the library to my dorm late at night tended to be a solitary one. It was a long, dark, lonely walk. Walking home from visiting a friend off-campus was dark, too - all those large, lovely trees hid the street lights, and townspeople tended to close up shop and stay home after around 9:00 pm.

That first year, I would refuse to walk alone after 9:00 pm or so, early hours for a college student. My female friends would tell me not to be silly. I was very shy in other ways, not tending to bother others. But in this I was resolute. I would not visit them late, nor leave a party alone. I remember my friends’ impatient reponses. My fear was unpopular; it was regarded as stupidity, and bending to it was a sign of weakness.

By my third year, it had all changed. A wave of rapes had hit campus. One of my friends escaped an armed rapist. A male friend of mine was inconsolable when his date had gotten angry with him, had stormed out, walked home alone and was raped. It was terrible.

But I was not one of the victims. I had listened to my fear. Sometimes, fear is good.

I remember this now because I have, like many, endured social media messages denigrating those who are cautious about covid-19. Here’s one that sent me over the edge: In a discussion about whether restrictions are unconstitutional, a friend of a friend wrote, “I totally respect your right to live in fear and stay home as long as you feel it’s necessary.” The underlying message -- “I am so much better than you because you are giving in to your fear.”

Sometimes, fear is good. Sometimes when fear whispers to you, all you need to do is obey. It’s your gut saying, “there is something very wrong here.”

We tend to think of Jesus as being totally fearless. If he ever felt fear when going up before the Sanhedrin or Pilate, he didn’t give into it. He knew the result would be an excruciating death, but he continued toward it.

However, there’s one passage that tends to be skipped over. It’s right after he raised Lazarus from the dead. That really caught people’s attention, and his increased popularity was a direct affront to the leadership. After the first century equivalent of a zoom meeting of the chief priests and Pharisees, “from that day on they planned to put him to death.”

Here’s Jesus’ response:

“Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples.”John 11:54

If you want to be like Jesus, pay attention to your fear, and do not walk openly about.

There are other types of fear, of course. When I was eight months pregnant, the bulk of the baby who is now 36 and living in London, was weighing on me so much that I couldn’t sleep well. We lived on a busy street, and each time a motorcycle went by I woke up, alert to the danger of… of what? I didn’t know. I only knew I woke up in terror. When a motorcycle came up behind my car as I was driving, I’d grip the steering wheel tightly until it would catch up with me and pass me, and I’d be able to breath again. I thought I was crazy.

Then my mother came to visit, and she happened to say to me, “Do you remember when Paul would come out and visit us on his motorcycle?” Paul was an old family friend I should never have been left alone with. But I was left alone with him, at the age of three.

I thought, “I remember, Mom. I remember.” When I heard his motorcycle coming, I knew to be afraid, and that fear stayed implanted in my brain, long after he was no longer a threat. My brain enlarged its alert state to include all motorcycles coming up behind me, ever and always. It was my body remembering.

I've learned that this strange, unrelated fear is common among assault and other trauma survivors. It makes you feel crazy, but you’re not. It’s merely an evolutionary mismatch. If an early human witnessed a lion attack, all the details of the lion attack would be warnings of the next one -- the lion’s roar, the quiet sound of the switch of the tail, for example. These days, all the things that happen at the same time as a trauma are not harbingers of the next one -- we just feel like they are.

If an old Beatles song was playing on the radio when you witnessed a knife fight and someone you love got hurt, then for the next forty years, your brain will tell you to be extra vigilant when you hear “when I get old and losing my hair, many years from now...” Just a few bars from that harmless song will make you feel very afraid. It can be paralyzing, or cause you to explode in anger.

The good news is that these days, science can explain these reactions. Here’s the classic read on the subject: Bessel A. van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. There are also good ways, such as EMDR, to help the body store traumatic memories so that they no longer have that sort of hold over you.

Therefore, this kind of fear -- a trigger from PTSD -- is another reason not to denigrate those who are afraid. Many of us have earned our fear the hard way.

There’s also a fear that comes from a sense of helplessness and uncertainty. Familiar ways of understanding things are gone, and it’s downright scary. That is a mindless kind of fear. Jesus healed a man who came to him who was living naked among the tombs, without any restraints -- he could break off any shackles put on him. “Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.” Mark 5:5 This must have been a rather frightening thing for newcomers -- a mad man was living naked near the city, and was so strong he couldn’t be restrained. Townspeople had probably grown used to it.

Then Jesus healed him, and the unclean spirits went into a herd of pigs, who raced to the cliff and died. When the townspeople saw him sitting there “in his right mind and clothed,” what was their response? Gratefulness? Awe? Nope. Fear. Mark 5:15: “and they were afraid.”

They were afraid of the man only when he was in his right mind and wearing clothes? That’s what the scripture says. But what comes next is worse. They didn’t make very good decisions. Mark 5:17: “Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood.” They could have had Jesus among them -- healing, teaching, inspiring, loving. But no, they responded to their mindless fear of something they didn’t understand by begging Jesus to leave.

I have done that, too. In the beginning of the pandemic, I was in a grocery store when suddenly I was very afraid of all that could happen. I let the darkness into my mind, all the “what if’s” gripped me, and I could no longer think clearly. I was seized with a desire to protect my family - by buying out the store. It would not have been a good decision! Fortunately for my bank account, I recognized the moment. I let myself breathe, counting the breaths in and out. When I got home, I sat in a comfortable chair, read the Bible, and then sat in prayer, repeating a favorite scripture, over and over.

After 20 minutes or so, I felt a deep connection with God envelop me. I felt restored to myself. In Mark 5, the person who was not afraid of Jesus, and who made the best decision, was the one who had been closest to Jesus -- the man who Jesus had healed. As Jesus gets back into the boat, he begs Jesus to let him come along. But Jesus tells him “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.”

Many times as the darkness begins to grip me, and my mind seems trapped in a circle of “what if?”, prayer and meditation connect me to God and restore my soul. It’s just like Psalm 40:2-4 describes:

He drew me up from the desolate pit,
    out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
    making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth,
    a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
    and put their trust in the Lord.

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Doug Bennett speaks to Durham Friends (Maine, USA) on what it means to be alive.

Among those pushing to reopen the USA are large numbers of Republicans. What's the evangelical role in this pressure?

Speaking of evangelicals ... an interview with Mark Noll.

Reinventing Pendle Hill's daily Quaker worship in the Zoom era.

Slate on Little Richard and the music he shaped: Jack Hamilton. Tom Scocca.

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Little Richard appears on Granada TV in 1964, with Sounds Incorporated and the Shirelles. Note his rendition of George W. Cooke's "Joy in My Heart," starting at 9:51.

Permission to heal

Source.

Amazon.com link for this book.

William L. de Arteaga, author of Agnes Sanford and her Companions: The Assault on Cessationism and the Coming of the Charismatic Renewal, takes his subject very seriously:

As time passes and it is easier to evaluate her work with historical perspective, it is clear that she was one of the most important and original theologians of the twentieth century. The list of her accomplishments in the field of theology and innovations in healing ministry is astounding.

... and he follows with what is indeed an impressive list of Agnes Sanford's books, leadership roles and initiatives, students who themselves became prominent, and even her pioneering role in ecological spirituality.

If Agnes Sanford is as important as all that, why is she rarely quoted and anthologized and included in seminary courses? De Arteaga has thoughts on that:

Mrs. Sanford's relative obscurity today is due to several factors. One is that her theological writings, like that of her contemporary Pentecostal brethren, were simply written and based mostly on reflections on Scripture which were formed from comparisons and analogies to her experiences in prayer and the healing ministry. This is very different from the expectations people have as to what "serious" theology is supposed to be. These assumptions include that theology must be written by an academically credentialed person, have many comparisons and citations from other theological works, and include references to the latest theological trends. Mrs. Sanford did none of this.

But perhaps the more important reason for her obscurity today is that even in her most influential period, 1950-1970, her theology was considered suspicious by many Christians.

The background for this suspicion forms a major part of de Arteaga's fascinating book. His scope is the whole history of Christianity, and within that movement, the influence of three dynamic trends that have affected the way the church views Agnes Sanford's central concern -- healing prayer -- to this very day.

First, the "Galatian bewitchment": For de Arteaga, it is a given that in the period of Jesus and the apostles, the gift of healing, and other extraordinary gifts, were active. But in succeeding generations, those gifts were increasingly marginalized. Among some Christians, the gifts themselves were subordinated to the virtue of humility, and were to be practiced second-hand, exercised only by special "holy" people or by saints through petitionary prayers. This "bewitchment" alienated believers from their own rightful authority, affecting both the Catholic and Orthodox families in various ways.

Second, "cessationism": In contrast to the Catholics, the Reformers and their descendants took a somewhat different approach to marginalizing or denying gifts such as healing. In confronting what they saw as abuses in the Catholic church connected with the monopolization and ritualization of healing, they tended to deny that anyone after the apostolic era had these gifts. This approach, cessationism, was usually intended to strengthen believers in their biblical faith. (After all, the apostle Thomas was told, "... blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.") Ironically, the corrosive effect of belief without access to authenticating spiritual power or experience was what de Arteaga labels "the gifts deficient church and the secularization of Europe."

Cessationism dominated both of the major movements within European Protestantism. The theological conservatives "maintained the cessationist hermeneutic at all cost" for their own reasons, while theological liberals adopted one or another form of Schleiermacher's "myth hermeneutic" by which historical miracles of any kind were demoted to edifying stories. The much vaunted scientific method didn't extend to theologians investigating whether any claims of healing were actually true; those claims had already been defined as untrue.

The third dialectical trend proposed by de Arteaga is the "Marcion shove," the potential of heretical movements to break through orthodox complacency and restore a more balanced and genuine orthodoxy. The original Marcion (whose theology was, de Arteaga says, "both destructive and insightful") pushed the church toward a more adequate stewardship of its holy writings. It took a generation of more recent heretics to help Christians break through centuries of "bewitchment" and cessationism to a rediscovery of miraculous gifts. But it was precisely those modern Marcions who are also responsible for the context of suspicion that has helped obscure Agnes Sanford.

The central chapters of de Arteaga's book are a parade of the fascinating characters who represented that modern "Marcion shove" ... spiritualists and Christian Scientists, mystical entrepreneurs and gurus, many of whom played a role in what is sometimes called "New Thought." De Arteaga describes how, in his own view, each of them combined elements from Christianity, other religions, freelance mysticism of all kinds, and (sometimes) sheer force of personality to begin satisfying the popular appetite for spiritual power that respectable mainstream Christianity was often leaving utterly unsatisfied.

Sanford's crucial role was to take that legitimate hunger and show how a believer's prayer, shaped by biblical faith (and by mentors with similar biblical grounding) could meet the need. She and the relatively few others who were having similar insights began creating associations, seminars, and camps, ultimately reaching hundreds and thousands who became leaders in their own turn in the modern healing movement in Christianity. De Arteaga shows how that movement overlaps with Pentecostals and the charismatic movement, but is not wholly confined by either.

This brief summary doesn't do justice to the care and complexity of de Arteaga's book. Aside from the value of his historical and theological treatments of healing, for me the book gave me an amazing sense of being back in touch with my beloved mentor Deborah Haight, who first told me about Agnes Sanford. Some of the people Deborah and I talked about in my very first months and years as a Quaker, are mentioned in this book: George Fox, Frank Laubach, E. Stanley Jones, and Rufus Jones. Other people mentioned in the book, such as Dennis and Rita Bennett, George Maloney, Ruth Carter Stapleton, Francis and Judith MacNutt, and Morton Kelsey, are also people I first learned about in those years.

Agnes Sanford and Judith MacNutt, about 1980 (from the book)

A related engaging feature of this book: the delightful juxtapositions of people usually not mentioned in the same breath -- Augustine, Cassian, Calvin, St. Gregory of Palamas, Emanuel Swedenborg, Jonathan Edwards, Mary Baker Eddy, Karl Popper, Albert Einstein, Max Planck, John MacArthur.... As de Arteaga says about Agnes Sanford and her breakthrough syntheses, she was aware that, "like many others in CNP [Christian New Perspective], she was in two apparently incompatible camps at the same time." I've been there!

One of the contradictory undertones of the book is its withering references to western liberal Protestantism. The mainstream seminaries come in for frequent condemnation as self-serving academic guilds and as hotbeds of skepticism and reductionism. Some of this is no doubt deserved, but not all, and it's hard to reconcile that snide tone with the same author's argument that God's sovereign power can transform heresy into something good, and his willingness to find good features in even the oddest heretics of the Marcion Shove. I don't disagree with his historical generalizations, only with their blanket application. I've met many faithful praying people from these sorts of "mainstream" and "liberal" seminaries.

Unfortunately, the book has a large number of distracting typographical errors. I don't know who does quality control for the publisher, but someone was asleep. This certainly shouldn't dissuade you from getting William de Arteaga's delightful book, meeting Agnes Sanford's fascinating companions in healing, and maybe even becoming one of them.

UPDATE: The author let us know (see comments below) that those typographical errors have been corrected.

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John D. Wilsey: Is the Evangelical right actually conservative? "The crisis of authority among rightist evangelicals is more than a nuisance."

Suffix of the year.