One final post about hell

Concerning my latest survey on the terms "Quakers" and "Friends"—I'm doing a bit of a cheat. One respondent wondered why there was no category for "Hicksites" and another wondered why there was no category for "Orthodox." (Brief explanation of these terms.) Fair enough! I've added those two categories. If you've already responded and would have preferred one of those new categories to the "liberal" or "evangelical" categories already provided, let me know and I will (ahem) adjust the results. I'm glad I labeled this an "informal" survey. Once again: the survey is here. Please share it widely. Many thanks to everyone who has already responded.

"People leaving the northern Gaza Strip amid hostilities, following repeated calls by Israeli forces and the opening of a 'corridor.' Photo by UNRWA, 8 November 2023." (Source.)

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(Source.)

Voiceover: "For the Palestinians displaced from the north, this is what awaits them in the south of the [Gaza] Strip." (Screenshot from source.)

This morning, on SE 52nd Avenue here in Portland, Oregon, I saw a billboard asking "Where are you going? Heaven or HELL."

Mark Schaefer's blog post about this series of billboards pretty well sums up my own thoughts on this message. But the words "Where are you going?" and the two blunt destinations made me think about the images we're seeing from Gaza. Those people walking along Gaza's main north-south road, with children in their arms, or a few possessions, some with white flags—where are they going? What awaits them there? Something like heaven, or something more like hell?

On the Deutsche Welle video from which I drew one of the photos, aid organizations are quoted as saying "Nowhere in Gaza is safe."

As I assembled these images, I remembered a passionate sermon from Munther Isaac,  "God Is Under the Rubble in Gaza," which Isaac gave on Oct. 22 at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Beit Sahour and again at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, following the bombing of Gaza's oldest Christian church.

Here again that question—"Where are you going?"—echoes in the sermon...

We are broken. The people of Gaza are suffering. They have lost everything except their dignity. Many attained glory—they attained martyrdom—even if they did not ask for it. Now, again in our history, they find themselves facing the same choice: death or displacement. Our Nakba continues!

Where are they to go? There is no place for them in this world!

You and I are praying for them, and we know that the people at the center of the storm are in constant prayer:

We prayed. We prayed for their protection … and God did not answer us, not even in the “house of God” were church buildings able to protect them. Our children die before the silence of the world, and before the silence of God. How difficult is God’s silence!

Job's words seem to ring out from somewhere in the background, from Job 13:15 ..."though God slay me, yet shall I hope in God...." Indeed, Munther Isaac calls on the faithful to remember that "Jesus is no stranger to pain, arrest, torture, and death." Furthermore,

We have another comfort, which is the resurrection. In our brokenness, pain, and death, let us repeat the gospel of the resurrection: “Christ is risen.” He became the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. When I saw the pictures of the bodies of these saints in the white bags in front of the church, during their funeral, Christ’s call came to my mind: “Come, you who are blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundations of the world” (Matthew 25:34).

But along the way, Isaac does not dodge the agonizing question of prayers that seem to go nowhere: "We search for God on this land. Theologically, philosophically, we ask: Where is God when we suffer? How do we explain his silence?"

I find that, in the tragic midst of this hellish reality (a reality also experienced by the innocent victims and hostages of Hamas!), I've run out of patience on the threat of hell as an evangelistic tool. I've outlined my indictment before:

• "They stand condemned..."
• "We will never see another non-Christian"
• Hell, holiness, and Jerusalem
• God's sweet revenge

Perhaps only a cultural context of individualism, safety, and affluence could explain how a prominent evangelical writer could pose the problem as glibly as Erik Strandness did in the quotation I cited in God's sweet revenge, part two:

I agree with [Rob] Bell that love does win, but his conception of love is incomplete because he forgets that it takes two-to-tango. God has extended a dance invitation to all of us so when we tell Him that our dance card is full we miss the opportunity to trip the light fantastic with the lover of our souls. Sadly, many humans are afraid of the commitments inherent in divine intimacy so they opt for being wallflowers at the salvation dance rather than stepping out and cutting a rug with the Groom at the wedding feast of the Lamb.

God’s love wins! However, when it is not reciprocated, those who reject it lose. Hell isn’t about sins committed but about God’s redemptive love going unrequited.

I'm serious. Where in Gaza or, for that matter, where in the real world of suffering, or shattering disillusionment, whatever the location, is God's "dance invitation" decisively evident? And through whom? Thank God, the invitation to faith is still present even in Palestine, through the honesty of people like Munther Isaac. I can't speak for these Gospel voices, but I doubt they use the threat of hell to sharpen their arguments among people who are already living in constant fear, people who surely must sometimes be asking themselves, "How do we explain God's silence?"

If some of them sadly conclude, "Maybe there is no God," can we truly say that an invitation was knowingly, obstinately, and fatally rejected? Turning the question around: How can we contribute to effective expressions of God's love among a people whose experience is that, in Isaac's words, "Hell is a reality in Gaza today"?

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Updates page for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Friends Committee on National Legislation (its annual meeting and Quaker Public Policy Institute) meets in person and online November 15-19.

Mark Russ gives us a peak at the 2023 online gathering of the Quaker Theological Discussion Group and previews his own paper. More details on the two-day event (December 1 and 2) here.

Matt Vlaardingerbroek gives us three reasons why Bible-believing Christians don't really exist. And David Williams says, yes, you can have a biblical worldview without, you know ....

Bill Jolliff reviews Derek Lamson's "A Month of Sundays." You may remember that Derek Lamson is also the author of Mark V: The Opera, which I reviewed here; and Judy Maurer's interview with Derek is here.

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Here's a "needed" song. As Eric Bibb says, "Just what my soul needed." (As they get ready to play, the musicians refer to the Lightnin' Hopkins version in the movie Sounder.)

Mark V and the Eugene demoniac

There's something you could do that would make this blog post/review a lot easier to write. And it will only cost you $20 plus postage, and perhaps a certain amount of trust.

Here it is: go to this Web page and order Mark V: The Opera. Fair warning: read the description before buying. Also see Judy Maurer's interview with author Derek Lamson here.

Mark V: The Opera was written by Derek, illustrated by John Williams, and lettered by Brandon Buerkle. In retelling the story of the Gerasene demoniac liberated by Jesus, set in contemporary Eugene, Oregon, it has all of the advantages of a graphic novel. It can switch times and contexts instantly, shift in and out of dream mode, and drop in little visual puns and Easter eggs specific to Eugene--but those same advantages might lose their magic in the hands of a conventional reviewer.

Instead of a linear summary of the book, here are some questions that might hint at the connections Derek Lamson makes as his hero, the graphic Derek, composes his graphic opera: 

First, Derek looks at the Biblical record. "I was trying to understand how the [Gerasene] demoniac [from Mark 5:1-20] went crazy, because he wasn't always crazy, he wasn't born broken, any more than I was." How did Derek the opera-dreamer envision the effect of Roman imperialism on the Mark V demoniac from Gerasa? 

What social forces have cycled around to marginalize and bedevil people today? Can our own ancestors help us understand how we got here? Can today's addicts and others living in bondage open our eyes? When we're under attack by our own addictions and demons, do we know whom to call?

When Jesus comes to us, prepared to remove our chains, how will we receive him? What will he ask of us? Will anyone at all believe our story? ("We're Eugene--we don't do religion!" "...How I became a zombie for Christ and now you can too. Have your credit card ready--operators are standing by!")

Along the way, Derek furnishes his story with a rich series of signposts and symbols, some whimsical and some definitely not. Drops of blood. Quakers and ghosts and guardian angels. The graveyard at night (specifically the Eugene Pioneer Cemetery at East 18th Ave. and University Street). The city of Eugene itself (well, and Veneta). Voices. Demons. Ezra Pound. An edgy tee shirt about "nice Quakers." And panhandlers--voluntary and involuntary--maybe reminding you that you've met each other before, and asking a haunting question:

"Can you spare some change?"

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Mark V book readings/signings on November 20 in Portland and December 10 in Eugene--see this page for details on time and place.

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On Ukraine: I'm sure that you're keeping up with events in Russia's war on Ukraine and aren't depending on my weekly blog posts to stay current. However, did you see the comments from the high priest of the Church of Satan on recent Russian charges that Satanism is gaining ground in Ukraine?

Concerning the possible Russian retreat from Kherson: what's the logic, and why the "fanfare"?

Prayer for Ukraine and peace: the weekly online meeting for worship under the care of Friends World Committee for Consultation, European and Middle East Section, will continue at least through the anniversary of the war's start. I'm there most weeks. Details at this EMES page.

The heads of several Quaker organizations wrote this joint statement on the Peace Testimony and Ukraine.

As I write this post on Thursday evening, London time, the balance of power in the U.S. Congress after Tuesday's election is still unclear. I found yesterday's post by Heather Cox Richardson to be helpful in this in-between moment. For now I'm taking an occasional look at The Guardian's election results Web page.

Last week I wrote about Quaker Shaped Christianity, the book by Mark Russ that's scheduled to be released in about a week. Woodbrooke is hosting an online book launch on December 5. Sign-up information for the event is on this page. 

Adria Gulizia asks, "Why do Friends worship?" Good question, thoughtful answers.

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Bobby "Blue" Bland and B.B. King, enjoying each other's company. (1977.)

New martyrs

"The Beheading of John the Baptist": "Michelangelo Caravaggio 021" by Caravaggio - The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

In my Russian context, the term "new martyrs" has a specific meaning: those who died for their faith under Soviet rule. But the world continues to generate martyrs--as I was powerfully reminded by an article by an Orthodox writer, John Parker: "An Orthodox Christian Response to Beheading By Muslims."

A completely different sort of "Christian" response to the ISIS beheadings has been the unauthorized circulation of private e-mails from Iraq with unsubstantiated claims of systematic slaughter of children. The truth is bad enough; why overdramatize if not to whip up anomosity? We already have plenty of experience telling us that, these days, Muslims are many Christians', and many Americans' favorite enemies.

In any case, the situation for Christians in Iraq is truly awful ... and not for Christians only. Those of us watching from a supposedly safe distance, whose responsibility includes helping to mobilize a world response to the crisis, may not feel that discussing the meaning of martyrdom might not be our highest priority. But we should also face the truth: some of us are going to be called upon to exercise this gift.

Martyrdom is a "gift"? I never thought about it this way until back around 1982, when our adult education class at First Friends Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, was studying Peter Wagner's book Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow. Wagner includes martyrdom in his list of biblical gifts and explains why. Even so, in the safety of a comfortable church classroom in a middle class American community, martyrdom seemed even less relevant than the gift of celibacy to a class of young (then!) married couples.

Now Judy and I live among people whose country lost millions of people during the Stalinist repressions, not to mention 27 million more untimely deaths in World War II. Among those people caught up in the mass cruelty of those years, many thousands died one way or another for their faith in Christ. In this context, ideas of safety and security take on a new and much more fragile perspective. The choice to prioritize faithfulness or our own lives (and that of our nearest and dearest) is not theoretical. This is more dramatically true in some parts of the world than others, but there's no place where we can justify blissful ignorance.

How does martyrdom relate specifically to Friends discipleship? R. W. Tucker, in his "Revolutionary Faithfulness," distinguishes "cult pacifism" from the cross-shaped testimony of early Friends:

Cultishness is the first and most conspicuous face of Quaker pacifism today. A prospective new Friend is likely to meet Quaker pacifism first in the shape of the dear old lady who rises in Meeting for Worship to speak to the children about why they ought to be pacifists. She tells homely little stories about pacifists who won through to victory in some worldly dilemma. Such cult pacifism is pretty easy to debunk. It is false doctrine in obvious ways. It discounts the Cross, and the whole bloody history of martyrdom.

In contrast, Tucker urges persistent and costly faithfulness, and by persistence he includes faithfulness in the face of clear evidence that many people are not nice, and will not become nice just because we are (at least in our own eyes). We remain peaceable, in other words, when we might have to pay for it with our lives. No wonder the late T. Canby Jones told us that a crucial step in understanding the peace testimony is coming to grips with our own mortality.

Friends do have a powerful heritage of martyrdom--and it goes right into the present day when we take into account the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and the death of Christian Peacemaker Teams' Tom Fox in Iraq. But as we see from John Parker's "Orthodox Christian Response," the history of faithfulness unto death goes back to apostolic times. In the larger family of faith, this too is our heritage. As Parker says, "We stand proudly with the martyrs, whose blood is the foundation of the Church. And we beg God to grant us equal strength when we have to face what they did."

This post is first and foremost addressed to myself.

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A "Statement of Conviction" (PDF) originating with Christian Peacemaker Teams' participants in Hebron in 1996. "We reject the use of force to save our lives should we be caught in the middle of a conflict situation or taken hostage. In the event that we die as a result of some violent action, we reject the use of violence to punish the people who killed us."

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Wess Daniels, "Learning the Art of Sketchnote Preaching." "... When I get stuck in a writing project it may be helpful to change tactics...." Delightful and useful!

Thanks to Mark D Russ, here's a fresh glimpse of Beacon Hill Friends House in Boston, the place where Judy and I met.

"Conversations that could change your life." Friends Summit 2014.

The subtitle says it all: "Churches without the broken are broken churches."

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After a concert at Reedwood Friends Church back in 2006, Derek Lamson picked up his guitar and played his (then) new song about Tom Fox:

Worship seeking more understanding

I've decided that the best way to confront my inner curmudgeon is, when I find myself getting irritated and judgmental, to ask myself, "Aren't you of (at least) two minds about this yourself?" Or to put it another way, I shouldn't pretend that my settled views on a subject have been settled all that long!

To take an old example, it sometimes irritates me to hear George Fox taken out of context in support of views that he wouldn't have agreed with, as in the citation of "that of God in everyone" as the supposed core of Friends faith. (Here's Lewis Benson's take on this phrase.) The problem with getting too judgmental about this now is that, when I correctly demand that the words be read in context, I can forget how important, how liberating Fox's insight was to me when I was a young Christian and brand-new Quaker. If I can just take the time to remember that early excitement, and suppress my more recent sourness, then I can tenderly link those beautiful words to another important Foxian soundbite: "Christ has come to teach his people himself." Although "that of God in everyone" is misused in the service of modern Quaker liberalism, the theology behind it (which is the same theology that's behind "Christ has come...") was as creatively disruptive to the conventional Christianity of his time as our Quaker faith and practice should be creatively disruptive to the conventionalities of our time--and with the same liberating effect.

Can I apply that same patience and honesty to my puzzles about worship? This line of thought was kicked up by my recent Web rabbit-trails, the inevitable chasing down of tantalizing blog essays that happens every time I visit emerging-church and evangelical-rebel sites like theooze.com. Today I went to an outdated link on last month's conference on "The Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future." It turned out to be a call to "... Evangelicals to recover the conviction that God’s story shapes the mission of the Church to bear witness to God’s Kingdom and to inform the spiritual foundations of civilization"--in part by letting that "story" be the primary shaper of worship.

Although I sympathized with the Call's familiar critiques of theory-centered, performance-centered, and ego-centered worship, I found myself getting prickly as I was confronted by its stern imperatives for worship: "to recover the historic substance of worship of Word and Table and to attend to the Christian year, which marks time according to God’s saving acts." In other words, liturgy and lectionary (and, unbidden, my judgmental inner voice kicks in: icons, candles, incense, majestic and dignified gestures, and eventually, the ancient squabbles over who is entitled and licensed to stage-manage these procedures for our vicarious benefit, and who exercises quality control).

Okay, to be perfectly honest, when I attend worship in a Russian Orthodox church, my tears can flow freely in the presence of these elements. And also: I cherish my experiences of helping host Taizé services at Reedwood Friends Church. And there are icons on my desk and two more behind me.

Even so, if it were up to me, worship would be outwardly pure and austere. In my fantasies, the community gathers in subdued joy, simply and reverently sits and waits on the Holy Spirit, responds with sincerity and mutual forbearance to the Spirit's inward and outward manifestations and our often fumbling attempts to be faithful, and at some ripe moment recognizes that meeting for worship is over. Before or after that adventurous hour (using the word "hour" loosely), we also gather for "education"--to help each other understand the issues of being a biblically-informed group of disciples who want our practice to match our faith, and who want to design processes of access for children and newcomers to be in possession of all the information, and all the models, that we have drawn upon for our encounters with God.

At our regular meetings for church governance, we would, as a community, prayerfully agree on what additional elements might be added to the worship period to serve our primary hunger to entrust our worship to the Holy Spirit. Will we reserve a space for our pastor or another person to provide reflections on the Bible or discipleship or implications of faith, or to invite the rest of us into a deeper commitment to Christ? Will we invite musicians and song leaders to contribute to the worship time, giving a few minutes of sheer joy to those who yearn to express their love of God and God's people with abandon, and perhaps nudging those of us who might otherwise stay too cerebral in worship? Will we dedicate some time to the collection of offerings, reminding ourselves that stewardship is part of the earthy reality of discipleship? Might someone be designated to speak directly to the children during worship?

As we add or subtract these elements, are we mindful of the overall balance of programming--does it still assume the primacy of the Holy Spirit, does it honor Christ as the head of the church, or are we tempted to take over for fear the Spirit will leave us high and dry? Or has our community become a place where it's not safe to ask that basic question, and it's better to confine ourselves to "planning worship" by shifting attractive segments on an all-too-human collage?

I admit that I've provided an idealized fantasy, although I've experienced parts of it at one or another of the many Friends meetings I've attended. In real life, we have to negotiate between our ideals (listed variously!) and the realities of custom and expectation and cultural patterns. Most Reedwood Friends are willing to sing a line in a praise song about "lifting our hands" but won't actually lift their hands! At Ministerios Restauración I'll lift my hands before we ever get to that line. The point is, I love the plainness of Friends traditional waiting worship because the rich texture is supplied by expectation, by the drama of the Divine encounter, and by the discipline of what my Quaker "godmother" Deborah Haight called the inward liturgy. But isn't that just me? How can I justify universalizing my preferences and looking askance at the spiritual delicatessens offered by the emerging church and the ancient-future folks?

(Sidetrack: You might justifiably point out that both ancient and contemporary worship practices have included periods of silence, and that some of the most eloquent explanations of the role of silence have come from outside Friends. But I'm not talking about silence as a discipline or element of worship. Friends don't worship silence; unprogrammed waiting is a foundation, not a module or an enhancement; its purpose is to anchor all our worship on the leadership of the Spirit. Even when we can't honestly say that we've "felt" the leadership of the Spirit directly, we benefit from our faithfulness and from our unwillingness to cover up that perceived absence. We programmed Friends with our slightly more elaborate worship patterns, are ideally not pre-empting God's leadership, but that's true only if our "additions" are based on corporate discernment. It's no fair shoehorning the open worship into a stuffed program as a nice Quaker ornament or a gesture to appease the traditionalists--or, worse yet, as a meditative device to reinforce the three points of the sermon.)

The awkward truth is that Friends have been practicing variations on the minimalist approach for three and a half centuries, and we've either not dared believe that it would serve the larger world of believers, or that larger world has voted with its feet against our approach. Globally, we can't even scrape together the population of Dayton, Ohio, to attend worship on our model (and far fewer if we only include the most minimal version, unprogrammed worship). It would be wicked for me to suggest that everyone else is voting for form over the possibility of genuine, Divine encounter. Therefore, judgmentalism becometh me not.

Still, I love our clean approach! At the same time, I am very grateful that the ancient-future folks, the emerging churches, and the spotlight they've shown on the issues of integrity in worship might now give us a new chance to offer our approach to the ecumenical conversation. As for my curmudgeonlike tendencies, I admit that when I visited one of the bloggers who commented on that conference, David Fitch, and rabbit-trailed over to his own church, I was most intrigued. Somehow, most of my petty finickiness was held in check--although you'll probably be able to guess what gave me a slight blip, here less than elsewhere. Clicking around the church's site, I saw a lot of neoquakerism (I promise never to use that word again!) including this lovely statement on being church: "At Life on the Vine we are a family committed to each other and to Jesus, the Head of our household. When we assemble for worship, his message is preached, his Spirit is present, and his people are restored, healed, and gradually conformed into his likeness. We invite you to participate, test the spirits, and allow the Holy Spirit to form your life."

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The title of this post, "Worship seeking more understanding," is a reference to a book I've mentioned before, Worship Seeking Understanding by John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, a gem of a resource on thinking about integrity in worship--and, in fact, this week's first righteous link. (While you're there, look at their interesting item on Epiphany in missional churches. Do I get any points for "attend[ing] to the Christian year"?)

PS: To sum up one of my critiques of ancient/future worship discussions: I want to resist the false dichotomy that might be set up between liturgical and narcissistic, implying that the only way to get out of consumerist and individualistic worship is to wheel in a liturgical model, or, in some markets, an attractive boutique selection of models. The Spirit-rich minimalism of Friends worship ought to be a third way, but let's be honest: How much individualism and inner-flashlight Quakerism (thanks, Ruth Pitman) has crept under the pious cover of unprogrammed worship?

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(Part four is here.) (Part one.) (Part two.)

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More righteous links:

Bill Moyers continues to provide amazing fuel for prophetic discussions: starting with the Christmas story, his "parable for our times" challenges the destructive recalibration of the words "liberal" and "conservative."

More prophetic fuel, on Iraq, in two national newspapers: Robert Kaiser writes on "Trapped by hubris, again," and John Burns reports that "U.S. and Iraqis are wrangling over war plans." The single scariest line of the latter article, in the face of the Bush escalation: "'This is an enemy that will trade space for time,' one officer said." Apparently, our side is willing to trade wounded and dead bodies for time.

Once again, Martin King's remarkable April 4, 1967 speech (see my comments of two years ago) got lots of attention around the King holiday this year. Here's an example from norwegianity.com. I think it is impossible to overexpose King's words in our present moral leadership vacuum.

If you're free Wednesday evenings, starting January 31, and can get to Reedwood Friends Church, join us for the latest session of our Center for Christian Studies. Larry Shelton will be leading a class on "Christ and Covenant Community." The 6:30 class is free, and is preceded by a reasonably-priced simple meal at 5:30. For more information, write to Carole Spencer, cspencer (at) georgefox.edu.

Here's an interesting, brief article in English, "Are there Protestants in Russian civilization?", on the Web site of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists.

Last Saturday, The Roadhouse Podcast celebrated its 100th edition. Congratulations to Tony Steidler-Dennison! However, my favorite recent show was #98. Given the price of CD's and the scarcity of blues broadcasting (with all due thankfulness to KMHD-FM), without Tony's podcasts I think I'd satisfy my blues cravings almost exclusively with the tried-and-true names of the past. Tony gives his listeners risk-free exposure to some of the best of new (often independent) blues artists, along with some contributions from the more established performers. Keep at it, Tony.

Speaking of blues, Friend Derek Lamson has a new Web site with links to an MP3 file of his song "One Cool Cup of Water." On one of our Wednesday evenings at Reedwood, last August, I recorded a few of Derek's songs. So, while he may be in Burundi today, he can also be on your computer screen:

Silences

I have several gigabytes of music on this computer, and I'm not listening to any of it. This is one of those times when silence is the best music. This is the first of the silences I'm thinking about today: the silence I voluntarily enter when I want to remember the texture of existence.

This is the most challenging silence. I have to enjoy my own company, go on internal resources, be responsible for my own spiritual awareness, and resist the temptation to addiction and self-numbing. In this silence I can awaken the channels I usually ignore—sounds from upstairs or outside or even from inside me.

The second silence I'm thinking about is that vulnerable silence of Quaker worship. The worship leaders can say "God is with us" all they want; in the silence, we can listen and taste for ourselves. We can approach the altar within, and receive communion there. Or we can stop short of that, remembering someone we're not reconciled with, and note an intention to attend to that. We can merge silences—personal and shared. We can be baptized in the silent Spirit bath, and receive a leading to tell others about the cleansing experience ("All the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter," said George Fox). Or we can hide in the silence and embroider its lacy esthetic to the point that the crying child is an irritation, not the miracle that is feeding others.

When I first encountered intentional silence, in my meditating days before becoming a Christian, I felt as if I were on the slide of a cosmic microscope. Then, when I began worshipping with Friends, the silence took on a very rounded shape, like a hill. At the beginning, I felt—still feel—the excitement of a journey ahead of me. I'd ascend with the help of the inward liturgy that Deborah Haight of Ottawa Meeting first told me about. Adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, supplication. Then the top section of the curve—the bliss of just worshipping, without agenda, at times almost weightless. As close to Jesus as I dare get. (Sometimes, the baggage I bring makes me not very daring.) On the descent, merging worship and daily life, letting my mind synthesize my images and intuitions, and test out leadings to speak or stay silent.

Another silence: God's silence. I know all the theological excuses, but when millions prayed for Tom Fox, and specifically when I thought I'd given God the most exquisitely persuasive reasons to keep him among us, the discovery of his corpse was so hard that piety gave way to anger. I had to remember that God's universe has a lot of built-in silence and apparent discontinuity in it, from our ground-level viewpoint. If God could tolerate the communal idiocy and cruelty of Judges 19, there is evidently space in God's creation for endless tragic mystery. Nothing that happens is so terrible that it hasn't happened before, I uselessly remind myself as I think about my murdered sister. The Bible seems to tell us that these things are what happens when people operate outside God's covenant. (Judges 21:25, "At that time there was no king in Israel. People did whatever they felt like doing.") Timing is everything, I guess. I'm just glad I don't run the universe, I just live in it, and try to live consciously. And the best way for me to do that is to live with people who stick close to Jesus, without hiding either in convenient cynicism or false piety.

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Speaking of sticking closely to Jesus, read these eulogies for Tom Fox. And Alivia Biko's Web site is hosting Derek Lamson's downloadable song for Tom Fox, the song I mentioned back here. (Thanks to Peggy Parsons for alerting me that the song had been posted.)

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Immigration and immigrants are again the focus of a national conversation, and I detect a bit more compassion this time around. (Disclosure of self-serving sentiments: I'm an immigrant.) I loved reading in an AP/Yahoo headline that the authorities were surprised by the size of the immigrants' rally in Los Angeles. On a sadder note, this BBC item reminds us that anti-immigrant attitudes and xenophobia are by no means confined to the USA. In Russia, I have personally witnessed antisemitism and racism being flaunted openly in a way that is truly shocking, considering how many millions of Russians were lost in a world war, still in living memory, that was ignited precisely by Hitler's antisemitism and racism.

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How indirection and evasion work: I appreciated George Bush's willingness to accommodate challenging questions at today's appearance at the World Affairs Council of Charlotte. Here's a bit of the AP story:

Defending his decision to go to war in Iraq three years later, Bush said it was important that he follow up his words with action when Saddam Hussein refused to cooperate with the United Nations.

"When America speaks, we ought to mean what we said," Bush told the World Affairs Council of Charlotte. "I meant what we said when we embraced that resolution that said `Disclose. Disarm. Or face serious consequences.' Words mean something in this world if you're trying to protect the American people."

Shouldn't this audience be able to trust that Bush's assertive recounting of history is accurate? We know that, by the terms of international demands, Saddam Hussein had indeed disarmed. Bush's coalition did not reluctantly attack Iraq to comply with a UN resolution but eagerly, with unseemly haste and sloppiness, lined up its compliant ducks to do so, after yanking out the inspectors who were in the process of assessing Iraq's weaponry. What serious consequences does Bush face if words, and facts, truly mean something in this world?

It's also frightening when our Supreme Court justices set an issue in a false frame. In this Reuters/Yahoo story, Antonin Scalia dismisses the constitutional rights of Guantanamo detainees. Scalia was quoted as saying, "If he was captured by my army on a battlefield, that is where he belongs." That IF is one of the points at issue, and it's not a minor point. We're not talking about a traditional infantry battle by uniformed soldiers, nor about a traditional war with traditional closure. Prisoners got enmeshed in the conflict by a variety of ways, including innocent blundering, denunciations, bounty-hunting, and, by most prevailing standards, honest combat against an invader. None of these ways provides a humane nation with an excuse to practice the cruelty of indefinite detention without recourse.

Scalia also said, "War is war, and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts." He's right. Actual combatants are released to go home. I cannot remember a case in modern times outside the Soviet bloc when someone else's soldiers were held in indefinite captivity. Inside the Soviet bloc is another matter: captured Germans and others sometimes disappeared for years inside the GULag, and so did Russian veterans who had simply had the misfortune of being captured by the enemy. Is this the comparison we've stooped to?

Tale of two banners

Friends of all flavors were in evidence at the March 19 rally and march in Portland, Oregon, marking the third anniversary since the invasion of Iraq. There always seemed to be people checking in at the Northwest Yearly Meeting booth and taking literature, buying water and bumper stickers, and talking with the Friends staffing the booth.

March 19 was a beautiful day for this event, which drew 10,000 participants according to the mainstream media. A huge coalition sponsored the demonstration, including Northwest Yearly Meeting's Peace and Social Concerns Board and several Friends churches. Among the changes since the last time I attended one of these events: I saw far more signs denouncing torture.

One thing that didn't change: the presence of demonstrators from the "radical means obnoxious" school of social change movements. They wore bandannas over their faces, and with great volume and discipline shouted "Democrats can kiss my ass; it's not just Bush, it's the ruling class"; and "What's the solution? People's revolution. What's the reaction? Direct action." One of their signs: "Fuck the troops."

At one point, the family member who was marching with me and I found ourselves just behind this group. Several others around us were getting angry with these would-be radicals who seemed to want to set the tone for the whole march, and two young people near us had finally had enough. They began shouting "Support the soldiers, not the war." Amazingly, this slogan caught like wildfire, at which point the anti-imperialists turned around, and glared at us; several gave us the finger. As a group, they stopped in their tracks, perhaps planning to hold up the march. The volunteer marshals quickly organized a bypass for the rest of us, leaving the loudmouths somewhere behind us.

I sympathize with people who get tired of recreational protest and incremental reform, but a mass demonstration is for community-building and perhaps, if we're lucky, a reminder to the politicians that there is, after all, a large constituency supporting a more ethical foreign policy. Demonstrations are not the leading edge of political work; that's accomplished by the daily hard work of building relationships, deploying persuasive communications, and non-cooperation with evil. Prayer sets the perspective; love is the essential governor that keeps us from spinning into a cycle of objectification and arrogance. And all of us who try to do this, in our own sometimes bumbling ways, deserve a party now and then, where we enjoy each other's company as well as rehearse our lines and exchange ideas. I'm glad we didn't let those who had contempt for our peaceful ways spoil the day for us.

(A few months ago I wrote a weblog post rejecting the idea that, by participating in demonstrations with fringe groups, I was associating myself with their messages.)

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For a few of us, the day ended with a special delight: a concert by Derek Lamson and Friends. Derek sang and played his guitars, accompanied by April Vanderwall (vocals and M.C. for the evening), Rich Vanderwall (bass), and Bill Norris-York (drums).

The concert was to help raise funds for Derek's trip to Burundi, where he hopes to minister through music and music education. He played long-time Derek and Friends favorites such as "Good King David," and some new material as well. We heard an unfinished song, just emerging, in honor of the late Tom Fox. A couple of the lines:

I hear Tom callin
from the other side,
other side of his release,
He says
what will you pay
for a little war?
what will you pay
for a little peace?

Another extraordinary song, "Hold On, Let Go," includes these lines:

40 long years
in that wilderness of sin
if Jesus brings you water, children,
jump right in
I'm gonna hold on
a little bit longer
waitin for you

(These are Derek's lyrics—he holds the rights to them. Thanks, Derek, for letting me quote them.)

As always, Derek's music combines rough and tender bluesy melodies with moving and intelligent Jesus-centered lyrics. Watch their site for news of their new CD and maybe for more of the words to Tom Fox's song. [Update: An mp3 of the song can be played or downloaded here.]

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I wanted to write a few words about the wavelet of interest in "manliness" but I've got jet lag. Manly or not, it's time for sleep.

Blues and hope

Just in the nick of time, Derek Lamson (bottom right in picture) and his friends are giving a concert of their Jesus-centered blues and roots music at Lynwood Friends Church here in Portland, Oregon. It's happening Sunday, March 19, 7 p.m. Click on the picture to go to their site for some mp3 samples—and buy the CD. It's good.

Until this very morning, I thought I was going to have to miss it to be at a court date in Indiana. But that date has been put off yet again. Good thing—I need this musical transfusion!

Item 1: In the absence of the new ghostwriters I'm trying to recruit for the Bush team (see my entry from a week ago), Alberto Gonzales continues to spread the sanctimonious line that the USA never practices torture. Pete Blackwell sums it up:

The administration's plan to avoid charges of torture is truly worthy of Orwell (it brings to mind not only 1984 but the Soviet treachery outlined in Homage to Catalonia as well):

• We don't torture people.
• We get to define what "torture" means.
• "Torture" is defined as "that which we do not do."
• By definition, objectively, we don't engage in torture.

Feel better now?

West Hills Friends Church has approved the following minute:

As Christians and members of West Hills Friends Church (Quaker), we embrace the ancient teaching of Scripture, "And God said, Let us make the human being in our image, after our likeness."(Genesis 1:26) Our spiritual forefathers and mothers taught us about "that of God" in every person and of the "light of Christ within" that illumines our lives and directs our actions. Jesus Christ showed us this light in his earthly life and taught us the way of peace as children of God. His valuing of persons, both high and lowly and his call to us to live as children of the kingdom of light, cause us to speak out against recent, and perhaps ongoing torture practices by our country.

Along with many others, we are shocked, revolted and saddened by our government’s use of torture in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, despite constitutional and Supreme Court precedents that have historically denounced physical and psychological cruelty. We see these practices as characteristic, not of this nation, but of those repressive and totalitarian regimes that we have historically criticized, judged deficient, and often sanctioned. The Geneva Conventions, considered to be the standard of civilized conduct for nations who respect human dignity, have been denigrated, denied and ignored by leaders of our nation.

We believe that torture can never be justified as a means of control or extracting information from those deemed enemies. Torture dehumanizes its victims, obliterating the image of God in those who are tortured, and thus insulting the Creator of us all. Perpetrators, in their blindness to the humanity of those they torture, become inflictors of unbearable humiliation and pain. Thus torture, by its barbaric practices and disregard for the dignity of fellow human beings, steals the humanity of tortured and torturer alike.

We now call on our government leaders, including the executive branch, to acknowledge the wrong and inhumane treatment of prisoners during recent years and to uphold in both word and deed the McCain Amendment to the Budget Bill recently passed by the U. S. Senate. Further we ask that these words of William Penn (1683) be the norm for further actions by government and individuals alike: "A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it…Let us then try what Love may do."

In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how British defense secretary John Reid can with a straight face ask the media not to undermine troop morale. According to the Guardian, he gave a "combative" speech in which he complained that the troops were operating in an "uneven playing field of scrutiny." Yes, they're under some scrutiny, while those in high places of power, the ones who put those troops in untenable situations, somehow aren't under that same scrutiny. Reminder: if you're concerned about your employees' morale, don't engage them in morale-destroying activities.

Item 2: New Supreme Court Justice Alito can't catch a break from his alert critics. I don't care whether he writes thank-you letters to James Dobson, but when Dobson read his brief note from Alito on the air, People for the American Way briefly went ballistic. Their press release charged that Alito's unimaginatively courteous note showed "an appalling lack of judgement." If they expend all this rhetorical ammunition ("obsequious and horribly inappropriate") on one little note, the on-air reading of which says a lot more about James Dobson than about Samuel Alito, what will be left if Alito issues an "appalling" opinion? Let's be fair: to say anything meaningful about this note, we have to know how many hundred other such notes Alito wrote.

I believe that the heretical enmeshment of evangelical Christianity and right-wing power politics is truly an important issue. Observers are right to worry that this heresy may influence Alito, especially given the record of the administration that nominated him. But trivial gotcha exercises strike me as mean and unworthy of this larger goal.

Item 3: Sexuality and two more examples of contemporary Western incompetence at dealing with it: The North Dakota law prohibiting abortion, and the British law concerning consent before sex.

I'm about as anti-abortion as a white male is allowed to be. For example, I'm even skeptical that rape is a good enough reason for an abortion: the child did not have a say in the matter. Yet I'm also skeptical about criminalizing abortion outside a true culture of life context—a seamless-garment understanding. I think it should be a lot easier and more secure, in terms of social arrangements, for a mother to bring a child into the world (for adoption, if necessary). And even severe inconvenience of a mother is not a good enough reason for abortion. The fact that men are often such miserable jerks in situations where abortions are tempting doesn't at all weaken the sanctity-of-life argument; that's a separate problem requiring its own solutions. Having said all that, a simple prohibition of abortion without all those other understandings in place seems like a cheap and mean victory for a force other than the humane, winsome evangelical Christianity I want to be identified with.

The current campaign in Britain (see this BBC page, for example; reactions here) to remind men to gain consent before sex is also disheartening. Not that I don't want men to be on notice that taking advantage of a situation clouded by alcohol is completely and criminally unacceptable. But both this law and the abortion debate remind me of a dimension of reality that I'd rather be in denial about: many people seem to have such a casual, detached, recreational view of sex that they've lost a sense of its earthy and awesome reality. Even for the affluent, sex isn't just a lifestyle matter. Lives are sparked into biological reality. Hearts are broken. Communities are affected. There seems to be no community-wide conversation about the sacred context within which we weigh decisions about having sex and creating children. Without that context, laws are blunt and brutal instruments, whether I theoretically agree with them or not.

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Quaker briefly arrested in Moscow: Viktor Vekselman, a member of the Moscow Meeting, was arrested during his one-man demonstration in front of the Danish Embassy in Moscow, according to a story from portal-credo.ru. Many thanks to Mikhail Roshchin for bringing this to my attention.

Viktor's "disturbance of the peace" at the embassy last Friday consisted of standing alone with a sign saying, "For prayerful dialogue among believers of various faiths." The arresting policeman was not dissuaded when Viktor explained that the law, as confirmed by Moscow's central administrative authorities, required neither advance notice nor permission for an individual picket. The policeman arrested him anyway. However, on Monday, the local judge returned the charge papers to the police, saying that the charge was inadequately prepared, and Vekselman was free to go. He made it clear that he is going to make a weekly practice of picketing for prayerful interfaith communion.

While in the jail, Vekselman met six members of the youth group Oborona ("Defense") who had been arrested for an unauthorized demonstration against the visit by the Hamas delegation from Palestine.

On Sunday, according to portal-credo.ru, Moscow Meeting adopted the following minute in connection with the caricatures of the prophet Mohammed: "We see that, in connection with the appearance of the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in various Western publications, an anti-western hysteria has broken out in many Islamic countries, the victims of which have been people who were completely innocent of any involvement. We stand for religious toleration and freedom of expression. The provocation of hatred and confrontation among believers is, we believe, inadmissible. We pray for peace in the hearts of believers and reconciliation among various religions and confessions." (My translation.)

Patrick and Christy Neifert, Friends workers in Russia from my yearly meeting, are participating in Barclay Press's "Daily Journal" series for two weeks starting last Monday. Go here for Patrick's first entry, then click on the calendar at the right for succeeding days' posts.