Tatiana Blokhina, Autumn in Bolkhov. Elektrostal Artists exhibition, 2012.
There is nothing new about imagining the world as a village. But today that image really struck me.
It came as I saw the photos and videos coming from Venezuela, with earthquake survivors' faces filling the frames with their personal accounts of disaster. That story on my news feed was followed immediately by the U.S. president blaming vandals for the National Mall's Reflecting Pool scandal, and his vice president and secretary of state spinning their awkward interpretations of war and not-war and maybe-again-war with Iran.
All that was soon followed by accounts of Europe's record-breaking heatwaves. (But nothing about South Asia.)
Speaking just for myself, maybe it takes witnessing disasters—earthquakes, famines, scenes of rubble-filled streets and their desperate inhabitants—to bring the world into human scale. But then, seen in that immediate scale, how do I regard the world's potentates and their conceits? Suddenly Trump, Putin, and other would-be global bigshots can be seen shrunk down to their true scale, not the puffed-up versions they want us to admire or fear. What right do they have—do we grant them—to pollute our village and put our neighbors and ourselves in danger?
I still don't advocate caricaturizing or demonizing them. But let's expose their imperial pretensions, whether they're peddling white Christian nationalism or the equally toxic Russian World ... or whatever actual demon is telling them and us that all our problems would go away if we saw our village neighbors as faceless "others."
We're going through a time when the vision of a global village may seem hopelessly idealistic. But ... is it nevertheless a valid vision? Or, if we surrender it in favor of a more cynical view, what keeps us from ending up behaving as apologists for the supposed realism of raw power, aided by increasingly clever tools of persuasion and disinformation?
Some of us are wonderful at bringing visions to life, whether through imaginative policy studies or through creative arts. Others are more suited to analyzing and exposing the forces which seek to pull down such visions in favor of passivity and mutual suspicion. Still others have the gift of keeping practitioners of these two different approaches in loving contact with each other, so that none of us find ourselves abandoned to disillusionment or resignation.
That's where I hope trustworthy faith communities can find a unique and urgent role.
Have you found such a home? Tell me about it!
Aleksandr Ilichev, North South East West, Elektrostal Palette exhibition, 2012.
The occupation of the USA by Donald Trump and his movement has now continued for 514 days and twelve hours. Whether by design or impulse, he and his Project 2025 allies seem to find new ways nearly every day to enrich themselves at our nation's expense, subvert our laws, ignore our courts, divert our taxes, weaken our international reputation, betray former allies, insult former presidents and other leading citizens, reduce civil and environmental protections, shoot and bomb at will, exalt racial purity, lie about our nation's history, and misrepresent our patriotism and our faith.
This constant flow of transgressions, along with the evidence that millions of our fellow citizens see nothing to complain about beyond the president's unfortunate vulgarity, can wear down even the sunniest idealist. When "our" side also resorts to gross malice, it doesn't help! Maybe it's for these reasons that this biblical advice, in King James English, has recently been echoing in my brain:
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
This is part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, specifically the verses (6:24-34) where we are told not to worry about our basic necessities but strive for God's kingdom and righteousness.
Most modern English translations translate "evil" (κακίᾳ) as "trouble" or"troubles." Sarah Ruden has "aggravation." ("Today's aggravation is plenty for today.") For some reason I like the English word "evil" here. In Jesus' voice the whole line seems to have a hint of humor or irony.
The full passage seems to suggest that we can overcome anxieties about our basic needs through faith in God, who knows what we need—and wants us to depend on God rather than the illusory security we might be tempted to get via wealth and worldly power.
On the other hand, Jesus doesn't tell us that we should not worry about others or simply forget about the future altogether. In addition, there are other places in Scripture where planning and policy are addressed. In this same passage in Matthew, we are to care about God's kingdom and God's righteousness. Further on in Matthew, addressing the people and the nations, are we sheep or goats? As for becoming too passive and today-focused, there's Proverbs 6:6-8:
Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.
And as regards policy, there's Joseph's advice to Egypt's pharaoh to prepare for the famine that's coming in seven years (Genesis 41:33-36): (here I have in mind those who argue that government has no role to play in caring for the people's welfare...)
"And now let Pharaoh look for a discerning and wise man and put him in charge of the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land to take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt during the seven years of abundance. They should collect all the food of these good years that are coming and store up the grain under the authority of Pharaoh, to be kept in the cities for food. This food should be held in reserve for the country, to be used during the seven years of famine that will come upon Egypt, so that the country may not be ruined by the famine."
Here's the lesson I'm drawing for myself from all of this—and please tell me if this is helpful of if I'm on a tangent:
Don't ignore today's evil; pay attention to what is going on in the world today that's not consistent with a vision of God's care for us all, and God's righteousness.
But then take it all directly to God. Confess freely to God both gratitude and distress. Ask how my gifts and temperament fit into God's picture.
Tomorrow, start the day fresh by being grounded in God's presence so that tomorrow's evil doesn't already turn me sour! I'm much more useful to self, family, and the world if I'm not obsessed and addicted.
Be prepared to join and support communities that plan and advocate for the longer term, but above all remember to live one day at a time.
Robert Reich charges Donald Trump with a rolling coup. (Is this a fair charge?)
Thanks to the creator of this spreadsheet, with its many details and contact information for U.S. legislators, governors, other officeholders, and news media.
Instagram video: Why do children of Christians become socialist?
I was feeling sorry for my half-Norwegian self when our temperatures here in Portland, Oregon, reached 95 degrees (F) a couple of days ago. A friend in Pakistan reminded me of another reality.
Nancy Thomas and a thirty-year-old memory of AI's forebears trying to tempt her with canned letters for "virtually every situation you can face in the church." (I remember this when she first wrote about it in Quaker Life. It's great, though sobering, to be reminded.)
The real harvest: Micah Bales on the day-to-day ministry of Jesus, and its implications for our role.
It’s a really big deal that God hasn’t simply jumped in and fixed our problems for us without involving us in the process. I want us to really grasp what this means for us as human beings: This means that we matter. Our lives and actions are important. The salvation of the world is coming about not merely through the Spirit’s action in the world. God in his wisdom has decided that our world is to be redeemed and transformed by the working of the Holy Spirit in us.
McKinley James, with Mark Wenner on harp. "Blues With a Feeling."
During our years in Russia, we celebrated Easter with our friends there according to the Orthodox calendar. This year, Easter on that calendar is this coming Sunday. Easter blessings to all of you who are in the midst of awaiting Easter Sunday on April 12.
A few days ago, Friend Ellerie Brownfain sent me her thoughts about Easter. I loved them! I hope and imagine you may find them as insightful and helpful as I did. With her permission, here they are:
Easter Message
There is a moment in John's account of Easter morning that I keep returning to. Mary Magdalene has come to the tomb before dawn and finds it empty. She weeps. Not for joy. Mary weeps because she believes someone has taken the body of her teacher and she does not know where they have laid him.
Turning, she sees a man standing nearby and assumes he is the gardener.
I have to say, if I had been there, I might have made exactly the same mistake. Though probably for different reasons. I cannot grow anything. Not even succulents. I buy the seeds and I read the instructions and I have genuine hope every single spring. And then somewhere between hope and harvest the plants just give up on me. But I keep trying. Every year. Because there is something in me that believes growth is worth the effort even when I have clearly lost the argument.
So when I read that Mary looked straight at the risen Christ and saw a gardener, I feel a kind of kinship with her. I know what it is to show up hoping something will grow and be surprised by what you find.
Mary says to him, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will take him.
This is a deeply human impulse. She is not looking for a miracle. She is looking for a way to say goodbye.
And then the man says her name.
Mary.
And she knows.
Mary reaches for him. And he says something that has always struck me as one of the most important lines in all of scripture. He says, do not hold on to me.
Do not hold on to me.
I want to sit with that for a moment because I think it is near the center of what Easter asks of us.
Mary came to the garden looking for the Jesus she had known, the teacher who walked the roads of Galilee, who ate with her, who taught her, who died on a Roman cross. Wanting to recover him. Wanting things to go back to the way they had been.
And the risen Christ says, do not hold on to that. I am not returning to what was. I am going forward. And you must go forward too.
. . .
This is the thing about resurrection that we can miss if we are not careful. We can treat it as a restoration story. The happy ending after a terrible Friday. The tomb is empty, the crisis is over, and life resumes. But life did not resume. Not the old life. The resurrection did not restore anything. It transformed everything.
But resurrection is not restoration. It is transformation.
Paul makes this plain in his letter to the Romans. He writes that we who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death. We were buried with him. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Newness of life. Not the old life resumed. Not a return to what was before. Something genuinely new.
Paul is talking about baptism but he is also talking about the shape of the Christian life itself. We do not follow a historical teacher who is safely in the past. We follow a living Christ who is present and active and always calling us forward.
George Fox understood this in his bones. When he spoke of Christ having come to teach his people himself, he was not speaking metaphorically. He meant that the risen Christ is here. Available. Present in the gathered meeting, present in the conscience, present wherever two or three are gathered in his name. The resurrection was not only a past event for Fox. It was a present reality. Christ is alive and moving in this moment.
The resurrection is not just something that happened to Jesus. It is something that is always happening in this Society of Friends. Christ is always being raised in us and among us. And we are always being called to walk in that newness.
So what does this mean for how we live? I want to name three things.
. . .
The first is this. Resurrection frees us from the tyranny of the way things were.
Mary could not have gone and told the disciples if she had stayed in the garden holding on. Letting go of what she came looking for was the only way to receive what was actually being given. And then she went. The first preacher of the resurrection. That is not a small thing. The first person sent to announce that Christ was risen was a woman whom the other disciples initially did not believe.
She carried the news to people who would not even believe her. She could only do that because love recognized love. She heard her name and she knew him. And knowing him was enough.
We do this too. We hold on to how things used to feel. How our families used to be. How our faith used to be simple and clear and certain. We come to Easter looking for something to retrieve rather than something to receive.
The risen Christ says, do not hold on. Something new is being offered. And it requires your hands to be open.
This does not mean that what we have lost was not precious. Mary's grief was real. The disciples' grief was real. Ours is real. But resurrection says that grief is not the destination. The garden is not where we stay.
. . .
The second thing resurrection means for how we live is this. We are sent.
Jesus does not tell Mary to stay in the garden and rest in the warmth of this moment. He tells her to go. Go to the brothers and sisters. Tell them what you have seen. You have been given this not only for yourself but for the community.
Easter is not a private experience. It pushes us onto the road to speak and to act. But what action? That is the question we must bring to God in prayer and carry into the silence of our own hearts. The risen Christ commissions us but he does not hand us a script. He trusts us to listen for what we are each being called to do and to go do it.
What have you seen? What has the risen Christ given you that was meant to be shared? That is an Easter question worth sitting with in the silence.
Because the risen Christ does not appear to Mary so that she can have a beautiful private moment. He appears to her so that she will go. So that the news will travel. So that the locked room where the frightened disciples are hiding will have its door knocked on by someone who has seen something they need to hear.
You have seen something too. This community has seen something. The question Easter puts to us is whether we are willing to go and say so.
. . .
The third thing I want to name is perhaps the most personal. Resurrection means we are not defined by our worst moments or our deepest losses. And if you doubt that, look at who Christ came back to. He came back looking for his disciples. The ones who had run. Peter had denied Jesus three times and wept bitterly over it. They were in hiding, behind locked doors, afraid and ashamed and probably not sure what to do next. Easter morning does not erase any of that. The gospel does not pretend Friday did not happen. But the risen Christ did not seek out the faithful and the steady. He went looking for the ones who thought they had failed him.
But it says that Friday is not the last word. Death is not the last word. Failure is not the last word. Grief is not the last word.
The risen Christ appears first to the ones who are weeping. He shows up in locked rooms where frightened people are hiding. He walks alongside two disciples on the road to Emmaus who are so deep in their grief that they do not recognize him until he breaks bread with them. He meets people where they are and then he moves them forward.
This is not cheap comfort. It does not minimize the weight of suffering. It does not tell us our pain is not real. It says our pain is real and it is not the end of the story.
Paul puts it this way. If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. United with him. Not observers from a safe distance. Participants in the same movement from death to life. That is what we are being invited into this morning.
I want to close by coming back to Mary standing in the garden.
She heard her name spoken by someone she had believed was dead. She recognized him. She reached for him. He told her not to hold on. And she went.
There is a whole life of faith in those few verses. We come to God carrying our grief and our need and our desire to make things go back. We encounter the living Christ in ways we did not expect and often in places we did not think to look. We want to hold the moment. And the Christ we encounter is always sending us forward into something we cannot yet see.
Do not hold on. Walk in newness of life. Go and tell what you have seen.
That is the Easter message. Not a return to the garden we remember but a commissioning to become people who have met the risen Christ and cannot stop talking about it.
— Ellerie Brownfain
You may have experienced a deluge of writing concerning the war with Iran and the events of the last few days. In lieu of a list of links that's no better than what you no doubt already have, and will inevitably go stale in a matter of hours, I'll just offer you this fascinating and disconcerting conversation on Donald Trump's "wishcasting."
Sergey Radchenko renounces his Russian citizenship, and why, and what next....
Consider supporting this Kickstarter campaign to fund art for the Friends Incubator for Public Ministry's new book, Constellation of Witness: Quaker Stories in Public Ministry.
Gospel blues from Kee Eso Pitchford, with thanks to Daniel Smith-Christopher for the introduction.
"If you want me to love my enemies, I'll say yes."
The Artemis II astronauts; their lunar mission began yesterday. (Left to right: Jeremy Hansen, Canadian Space Agency; NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman. Photos: crew: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani; launch: NASA/Michael DeMocker.)
Did you know that a lunar spaceflight began yesterday, with a crew of four astronauts aboard?
If so, did you care?
I couldn't help caring. As I've written before, space exploration has fascinated me since childhood. But ever since the Apollo project (1961-1972) made lunar spaceflight practically routine, I've been impatient about our next grand goal. After Apollo, low earth orbits just weren't all that impressive. (If the earth's diameter were the height of an average adult male, spaceships in low earth orbit would pass only a couple of inches over his head.) But we've seemingly lacked the ambition and focus to send people beyond those two inches.
It's not that we haven't done some incredible things in space by means of robotic explorers who've already traveled distances that crewed spacecraft aren't likely to reach for perhaps centuries. Some of them, such as the Hubble and JWST projects, have extended our vision into time/space up to just about the theoretical limit of the early universe.
As for money spent on space exploration, our legislators have poured vast amounts into equipment. Since it began in 2011, the Artemis program of heavy-lift rockets and Orion spacecraft has thus far produced two launches, including yesterday's, but it has cost something like US$ 69 billion. The immediate costs associated with yesterday's launch ran to about $4 billion. Despite its bloated costs and gigantic delays, every argument to replace the Artemis launch vehicle with more economical and project-focused alternatives has run up against congressional defenders determined to preserve the associated jobs in their states and districts. These debates have mainly occurred among insiders, because even these astronomical (sorry) costs haven't earned the attention of the ultimate funders—the taxpayers.
(Speaking of human spaceflight expenditures and delays, I won't even mention the problems of the Boeing Starliner.)
The alternatives to those traditional government-owned and -funded programs are the public-private collaborations that produced the SpaceX and Blue Origin spacecraft, among others. But to quote Amy Shira Teitel, "...it's opening the door to an era where NASA could become a contracting agency, funneling its budget to billionaires" instead of providing the leadership and focus of NASA's first decade of human spaceflight and its amazing record of successes in uncrewed exploration.
Again, I share Teitel's concern about the Artemis program in its larger context, if there even is a larger context:
...We have two landing missions or we have four landing missions. Then what? You know, like there's still that big question of what comes after that. And I just feel like we're almost kind of kicking the can down the road a little bit. Like, great, we can have a couple more missions. We can get a bit more science. Um, but then what? We're just delaying having to make a big decision about whether or not to retain this over-budget rocket or try something different or pass it off to commercial partners. It feels like that's an inevitable point that we're going to get to. (From this video.)
Exactly. If we are looking forward to establishing a moon base, as has been proposed, there's not much practical planning evident for how that will happen, given the current maximum of four more Artemis launches (if sticker shock doesn't hit us first!), or even a coherent attempt to persuade us that such a base is a worthwhile project on the way to some specified greater goal.
And I'm sorry, vague references to China aren't enough. President Kennedy at one point suggested replacing a U.S.-only Apollo project with a collaboration with the USSR and other nations. Is anyone designing a 21st-century version of his vision?
In the meantime, I'm following the Artemis II mission more or less constantly, and hoping very much for its safety and success, but I admit that it's not the same unmixed devotion I had for Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
Detail from Japanese Pearl Harbor attack plan. Source.
First, a few words about our latest war.
When I heard the first news bulletins about the 2026 Iran War, I couldn't help thinking about Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, that "dastardly" attack that happened while negotiations between Japan and the USA were still underway. U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull expressed his sense of betrayal very plainly to the Japanese negotiators.
The U.S./Israeli opening attack on Iran also happened during a period of active negotiations, facilitated in good faith by Oman.
I'm sure you have as much access to good analysis and commentary on this war as I do, so today I don't plan to say more here. I'm just aware that there are people alive at this moment, in Iran, Lebanon, Israel, perhaps the Gulf states, and beyond, who will not see tomorrow. May God have mercy on them, and on us.
Wess Daniels (from Reedwood Friends Weekly)
Last Sunday afternoon, Reedwood Friends Church here in Portland, Oregon, hosted C. Wess Daniels (biography) for a fascinating afternoon advertised as a session on "The Practice of Silence as Resistance in an Attention Economy."
It turns out that one of the themes that Wess has bravely connected to the topic of silence is boredom.
Boredom.
He's been thinking about how to attract more Guilford students to silence as a topic and as a practice ... and not just the Quaker students. Furthermore, he's certainly not hiding from the topic of boredom. He's not defining "boredom" as a danger for budding practitioners of silence, but boredom as a part of something good! Boredom as a superpower!
Maybe it's best if I let Wess explain it himself. Here are two of his blog posts that contain some savory hints of the content he shared so engagingly with us last Sunday:
By the time we met on Sunday, Wess had some other interesting stories to tell from his experiences with students—for example, when he asked them to interview trees.
All of this reminded me that I wrote about "boredom for dummies" back in October 2017, just after our final trip to the USA from Russia. Here it is:
The Amtrak Empire Builder.
... I don't have time for those who don't know what time is.
These words from Boris Pasternak came back to me during the long, slow hours we spent on Amtrak's trains from New York City to Chicago, and then from Chicago to Portland, Oregon.
To tell you the truth, I really needed those long, slow hours of sitting by the train window and letting time carry me into my future. In my last weeks and days in Elektrostal, time went by with dizzying speed, and my mind struggled to keep up, storing up impressions and sensations against the uncertainties of that future. It's likely that we'll never live in Russia again. (Yes, we hope to visit, but even that is uncertain. In any case, I don't think we'll ever again be residents.)
We are learning about gravitational waves rippling through space and time, thanks to Albert Einstein and the recent LIGO observations. For most of us, it's not news that time also seems to be experienced in waves, now compressed and now just dragging along. I love living in the moment, but slow moments, and stretched-out periods where time nearly seems to stop, are equally precious to me.
In a moment of unguarded boastfulness, I once said that I was never bored. That claim didn't stop me from preparing for the transatlantic flight and the train trip by loading my Amazon Fire with episodes of Doctor Who and the Vietnam War series, along with two novels, two books of theology, a history of Protestant missions, and two autobiographies—by Norwegian politician Gro Harlem Brundtland and American astronaut Scott Kelly. But much of the time, day and night, I just watched the country scroll past the window. I felt no pressure to savor or memorize or store up—I just let the planet be the planet and me be me.
Boredom is not a problem to be solved. It is the last privilege of a free mind.
These words open Gayatri Devi's essay on boredom, published on the Guardian Web site about two years ago. Her essay seems to assume a definition of boredom as a state of discontent resulting from lack of external stimulation. (Dictionaries, on the other hand, often seem to focus on boredom as a state resulting from the wrong kind of stimulation—tedious, repetitive, uninteresting.) She rightly recommends not curing boredom by reaching for new sources of stimulus, such as the ever-handy smartphone. Instead, she recommends "metathinking"—in a sense, observing yourself as you slide into boredom, considering what makes you bored, "how your mind responds to boredom, what you feel and think when you get bored."
I would just add a couple of things that are, maybe, already implied in Gayatri Devi's advice:
Learn to enjoy your own company. This doesn't mean to give yourself a free pass on everything that might appear on a Fourth Step AA inventory -- but look beyond your imperfections to the whole of yourself, the person whose God-given mind is capable of thought, reflection, observation, intention, reconciliation, synthesis of old and new ideas, and so much more. That apparently empty period of time, whether it's at on a slow train or in line at a bank, is just a golden opportunity to get to spend some time with your complicated self. (Learning to enjoy your own company is a good step toward confronting temptation and addiction. God loved you into being, as Anthony Bloom said, so it's time to look at yourself with God's loving intention in mind.)
Reframe slow time as prayer time. You can ask God or your own memory banks for prayer concerns that you may have forgotten or just heard about or that simply beg for your attention. Devi mentions Wordsworth's daffodils; you might instead choose or form a short prayer along the lines of the prayers I mention here....
Make me an instrument of your peace. Yes. Lord Jesus, have mercy. I want to dwell in you.
Back in 2011, I wrote about reading Pasternak's words about time as I sat waiting my turn at the bank branch in Elektrostal.
Luis Parrales: The raw experience of love restored writer Christopher Beha's faith, or at least the possibility of faith. "Beha’s response is to describe himself as 'a skeptical believer'; for him, moments of certainty commingle with moments of doubt." Such restorations have happened to other writers, too.
Also at Reedwood Friends Church: Last Wednesday we welcomed musician Dann Pell and his resonator guitars for a wonderful evening of music.
Some of his songs reminded me of the bard tradition in Russia, though in Dann Pell's case, there is an amazing balance between the poetry and spirituality of the lyrics and his intense and often intricate fingering.
Dann is from Exeter Friends Meeting of Caln Quarter in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. He's originally from Chester County, which, a lifetime ago, I knew well....
Don't miss a chance to hear him yourself, or invite him to your meeting or church. Here's a video that gives you a better sense than my words could.
Source: David Sipress, New Yorker via Seraphim Sigrist's Facebook page, commenting on his own back pain.
... [T]he gifts of the Holy Spirit are revealed in community. As such, they are for all the community, and so one gift does not quench the others, even when, as happens often, they are opposite. So the analytical does not quench the emotional, the gift of tears does not quench that of laughter, the gift of the spiritual elder does not contradict that of the psychologist, the gift of ecstasy does not stand in disharmony with that of calm.
Bishop Seraphim Sigrist (Orthodox Church in America) died last Saturday morning. There must be many people all over the world who are going through what I'm feeling now. Yes, it's true that we believe that "he fell asleep in the Lord," but he gave us so much wisdom and care and sheer fun that I, for one, can't help feeling sad and very sorry for us.
I never met him in person. The closest we came to meeting each other was when I visited the Pleasantville campus of Pace University to conduct marketing interviews at a time when he was working in the library. We actually met through a Facebook chat when he contacted me to consider joining an ecumenical fellowship that, during the peak COVID years, was meeting online. That invitation led to, among other things, five years of correspondence that I'm very grateful to be able to revisit anytime. We chatted about Japan (where he served as Bishop of East Japan, and where my mother was born and raised), our experiences of Russia, several mutual friends there, the intersections of Eastern Orthodox and Quaker Christianity, authors and artists we both admired, and the joys and puzzles of ecumenical life. We sent each other many links over the years; it was he who told me that Friends Journal had published an interview with the Norwegian author Jon Fosse, whom he was reading at the time.
Looking over that correspondence, I am amazed at my own openness with him in writing about my family and early life. I've no doubt that many others found him to be a person of surpassing empathy as I did. And some of you lucky people knew him for far longer than my five years.
His scope of knowledge, interests, sympathies, and ability to detect unexpected affinities and hidden kinships across all those fields was amazing. And he frequently made those connections with gentle playfulness.
In his positive review of Bishop Seraphim's book Theology of Wonder, the Christian Reformed scholar James Peyton wrote words that ring very true, more generally, of what I came to know and love about our friend. In the Calvin Theological Journal (pages 479-481), Peyton wrote,
There is no question that the author is a gifted theologian: It is clear that Bishop Seraphim is well-acquainted with a wide spectrum of views and controversies, both among Christians of various stripes and with the views of practitioners of other faith traditions throughout the world. However, he never makes such familiarity the point of his presentation or of any of the sections; indeed, he wears his extensive learning lightly. He is not concerned to show us how much he knows, although he knows a great deal: He refers deftly to the understandings current among Hasidic Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and various kinds of Muslims. He cites with considerable dexterity literary figures from various cultures, across many centuries, and in a host of genres. Unostentatiously, the author weaves these all into a seamless tapestry that invites readers to appreciate that "all things (considered in their depth) led into eluctable mystery" (93): Bishop Seraphim is concerned to show us how much he does not understand—or, better put, what no one can comprehend. In the best traditions of the rich Eastern Orthodox tradition in which he stands, this little book offers a contemporary—and very accessible—mystical theology.
Maybe he truly was a seraph cast among humans, sent on some mysterious mission. A seraph on earth would move awkwardly in crowds, his wings more hindrance than help, yet he would ache constantly for the divine presence he had known before. That longing defined Seraphim. I have never met anyone so profoundly nostalgic for heaven.
The fourth Global Ecumenical Theological Institute (GETI) in Wadi El Natrun, Egypt—an Eastern Orthodox perspective. (How I wish I could talk about this report with Eden Grace!)
You've heard of virtue-signalling. Now we have vice-signalling and vitriol-signalling.... (Skip these links if you want to stay on the sunny side of the street.)
Kristin Du Mez, Bruce Berglund, and the Moscow Playbook.
Writer and poet Nancy Thomas on the writing vocation, technological interruptions, and ... what rhymes with Forsythe?
This time, our "Baby Scratch My Back" version comes from Otis Redding (audio only with slideshow). It's probably my favorite version strictly for vocal performance. Musicians: Booker T. & the M.G.'s (Steve Cropper, Donald Dunn, Al Jackson Jr., Booker T. Jones) along with pianist Isaac Hayes and a horn section including Wayne Jackson, Charles "Packy" Axton, Andrew Love, Floyd Newman, and Sammy Coleman.
Sources: top; bottom. Is there a Christian version?
Last week, in the links section of my post, I quoted Adam Serwer's commentary on Federal officials' description of Renee Nicole Good, who had just been shot to death by a Federal officer.
Serwer went on to summarize the situation: "The federal government now speaks with the voice of the right-wing smear machine: partisan, dishonest, and devoted to vilifying Trump’s perceived enemies rather than informing the public."
In a more recent commentary, Serwer's colleague David Frum proposes an explanation for "Why Vance Committed So Hard to the Minneapolis Shooter. The vice president knows what ICE means to MAGA." As Serwer noted, "informing the public" is not the Trump administration's goal. Instead, Frum believes, (links in original)
For MAGA America, ICE is an instrument for cleansing violence. Visit ICE social-media accounts and you’ll see, again and again, videos of armed force against unarmed individuals, against a soundtrack of pumping music. There’s a montage of aggressive arrests in Minnesota of unarmed, nonwhite men, many of them thrown to the ground and cuffed, set to the 1977 hit “Cold as Ice”: “Someday you’ll pay the price.” A dozen heavily armed and armored agents round up a single unarmed woman in a T-shirt and two similarly defenseless men in California. In Indiana, armored agents throw handcuffs and ankle chains on a big haul of men and shove them in a cell, where they can be seen pacing, weeping, or with their heads plunged in their hands.
...
ICE is violence-prone in part because the agency has lowered its training standards and ditched much of its background vetting to meet the president’s grandiose deportation targets. But more fundamentally, ICE is violence-prone because its main purpose has become theatrical. Under present leadership, ICE is less a law-enforcement agency than it is a content creator.
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MAGA is many things, but above all it’s a movement about redistributing respect away from those who command too much (overeducated coastal elites) to those who don’t have enough (white Americans without advanced degrees who feel left behind). You see that redistribution at work in the Trump administration’s project to devalue medical experts and empower wellness gurus and vaccine skeptics, and in its dismissal of “deep state” national-security professionals in favor of TV pundits.
Vance and his colleagues quickly called the just-killed Renee Nicole Good a "deranged leftist" and "domestic terrorist." Most of us ordinary citizens who oppose this administration may be statistically unlikely to feature in gleeful ICE arrest videos. (Don't count on it! Especially if we're not white.) Instead, we are part of the nefarious "network" that Good belonged to; we're "radical left lunatics." Day after day, the public space is flooded with these messages, which may be shrugged off by the majority of the audiences, but which reinforce the project Frum describes: the creation of content that demeans critics and "redistributes respect."
Most of the target audience may never understand how diverse MAGA's critics are, and how absurd the charges brought against us by those with an interest in making us look super-organized, ruthless, and scary. Many of them will not see the irony that many of us critics are devout Christians, as are many of the people being arrested and deported by those who claim to be defending Christian civilization. But we need to stand up for truth in whatever ways we can, for at least three reasons: first, to defend the very idea of truth and give the lie to these charges; second, to remain sane and resilient in the face of these constant smears; and, third, to preserve a memory of what our semblance of democracy was like before the MAGA occupation began.
To be honest, some critics of MAGA are also pretty handy with insults and invective. Let's not go there. A few days before the second Trump administration began, I asked, "Are we agents of Lucifer?" No, we are not, but there is something demonic about this proto-fascist occupation we face. This evening, I'd like once again to refer back to the ideals of the Lamb's War: We don't search for enemies, we search for prisoners—and do everything we can collectively to free them.
The attempted cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel's television show a few months ago seemed like a Reichstag fire moment on our path to authoritarianism, but this past year now seems to me to have been a seemingly endless parade of such emergencies.
Sometimes I feel as if we're in a more or less permanent state of crisis for our constitutional republic and its paralyzed legislature and overworked courts, and sometimes it seems like we're in an utterly absurdist dream—now NATO allies are landing troops on Greenland!? When will we wake up?
Let's keep up our fierce campaign of ethical vigilance, a mutually respectful and prayerful division of labor (mystics, accountants, artists, journalists, musicians, prophets, healers—we're all needed!), and the miraculous joy of the Lord.
Judy and I recently enjoyed the newest movie in the "Knives Out" series: Wake Up Dead Man. Kristin Du Mez has some interesting reflections on the movie. Don't miss the comments, too.
As an immigrant, I appreciated Heather Cox Richardson's first commentary of the new year.
I woke up this morning, masked man knocking on my door
I woke up this morning, masked man knocking on my door
He says he wants to see my papers, or send me to El Salvador
I said masked man, what gives you the right?
I said masked man, what gives you the right?
He said I've got a gun in my holster, don't you put up no fight
I said masked man, why don't you leave me be?
I said masked man, why don't you leave me be?
He said there ain't no law in this here country, could ever apply to me
I said masked man, don't you take my baby child
I said masked man, don't you take my baby child
He said I'm breaking up your family, that masked man's running wild
So many masked men, running all around my town
So many masked men, running all around my town
They might pull your mother over, and then they'll gun her down
Oh there ain't nothing, that a masked man won't do
Oh there ain't nothing, that a masked man won't do
First he'll come for all your neighbors, and then he'll come for you
Oh the masked man, says he ain't the one to blame
Oh the masked man, says he ain't the one to blame
But he wouldn't hide his face honey, if he wasn't full of shame
I woke up this morning, masked man knocking on my door
I woke up this morning, masked man knocking on my door
If he shoots me or detains me, you won't see me no more
I'm grateful for a wonderful time in London with our son, and for safe travels back to the USA on two airlines I'd never heard of. Both airlines—Vueling and LEVEL—are owned by the same company that owns British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus, and both serve Barcelona, Spain, through which we flew to get to our transatlantic destination, Boston. Although Vueling's A320 had the tiniest pitch of any airplane I've ever flown in, with my knees pressed into the seat in front of me, I was thankful for a reasonable fare for a one-way transatlantic trip.
I'm grateful for the wedding that was the occasion for coming back to the USA through Boston. Our nephew Ben Cabezas married Chris Rainville last Saturday, in Hampstead, New Hampshire. Among the many blessings resulting from the wedding was the biggest reunion of extended family that I've experienced for decades. Best wishes to Ben and Chris, and thanks for the wonderful occasion and reunion. On the most basic level, I'm incredibly grateful for family, wherever they may happen to be today.
Our next stage of travel is planned to start tomorrow: Amtrak trains from Boston to Chicago and then Chicago to Portland, Oregon. We made this trip several times during our Russia years, and are looking forward to those days of continental sightseeing through train windows and the Empire Builder's observation car, along with plenty of time to read and to do my daily Norwegian language homework.
One wintery wrinkle: significant snow predicted along our Amtrak route.
I'm grateful that this is a holiday post, and I can end this post a bit early, compared to my usual length! It's time to celebrate.
Diana Butler Bass: "This Thanksgiving, we do not give thanks. We choose it."
Becky Ankeny on having trust that is based on the character of God.
Micah Bales on adulting in the Kingdom. "This is really good news for us who are just trying to be adults in a world that feels like it’s flying apart."
A tribute to sweet potatoes (one of Judy's Thanksgiving specialties).
Reposted, with permission, from Kevin's post on the Facebook group Christian Quakers. The titles above are mine.
This past First Day I felt a leading, as I often do, to invoke the memory of Abraham Lincoln in my vocal ministry. Lincoln is a hero of mine, and he steered the United States through the worst crisis in its existence up until that point, and arguably its most dire state ever in our nearly 250 years of existence.
Christians find themselves increasingly divided into factions these days. I'm speaking primarily about American Friends in this post. Quakers on the right adhere to their own strongly held beliefs and the same is true with Quakers on the left.
Friends are called by different names. Some are Evangelicals. Some are conservative, in the Quaker sense, meaning they seek to conserve the old way of doing things. Some are Hicksite Friends, usually closely allied with FGC—and are by in large liberal unprogrammed Quakers, who may or may not consider themselves Christian.
And who can say which of us has the correct answer, the correct verse of Scripture to invoke in debate, the most accurate usage of the Quakerese we know so well and love so much. I adhere to my own interpretation, but so does someone else who, while we might share the moniker "Quaker", we don't share very much besides that.
Lincoln observed a similar dynamic in his own time, a country torn asunder by Civil War. And he was struck by the many ironies. Thinking of what North and South had in common, Lincoln spoke,
"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other...The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.'"
The passage of Scripture with which Lincoln concludes the above passage with is pulled from the King James Version of the Bible. Put into more contemporary language, it states that suffering is inevitable. Some will always lead others astray. And though that suffering is inevitable, how terrible it will be for the person or persons who create it. They will experience harsh punishment.
We live in an era where many seek to lead others astray. Some through ignorance. Some through misguided zeal. Some with an agenda to advance. And I can't determine the complete truth in any source I consult. It all seems slanted to suit someone's self-interest.
Lincoln took a radical view about the American Civil War. A pox on both your houses! Both sides were equally at fault, in his reckoning. Though the South's plantation owners kept enslaved people, and maintained the system that kept it profitable, the North indirectly made money from the products produced by slave labor.
Maybe levying fault isn't as important as changing the status quo. I don't pretend that people with such wildly divergent views will ever come together under a common purpose. For example, the only thing an Evangelical Friend and I will likely ever have in common is the fact that we are a product of the hard work of George Fox. Beyond that, we are as different as chalk and cheese.
So rather than let this demoralize us, I suggest we work within the people who will hear our message and strive to push past the propaganda that passes for news, not just on the right and left, but everywhere. Provided that those who disagree with me don't deny my right to worship as I please and what I please, I have no grievance with them.
But wouldn't it be wonderful if we ended up on the same page, eventually. That's an idealistic goal and one that seems increasingly unlikely the older I get, but it is a solution for us, not just as Friends, but also as Americans.
Kevin Camp (they/them), a member of Birmingham (Alabama) Friends Meeting and Camas (Washington) Friends Church, published an excellent book of short stories last year, Thanksgiving on Meth Mountain. Fuller biography on their Amazon page here.
Kevin's post gave me a lot to think about.
First of all, their quotation from Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address once again reminded me of how unusual it is for a politician not to refer to God as 100% WITH US. Elton Trueblood referred to Lincoln as the "theologian of American anguish," and this speech makes the case. In the U.S. Civil War, the North prevailed, as Trueblood pointed out, not "as a consequence of the supreme wisdom or righteousness of the citizens of the North." When Lincoln spoke of "all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil", the settler colonial beneficiaries of that toil were in both North and South.
In one of the most sublime passages in English-language political speech, Lincoln yearned and prayed for reconciliation:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
What was always clear to some of us, and has now become glaringly obvious as racism makes a roaring comeback in today's USA: the nation's wounds have not been bound up, a just and lasting peace has not been achieved. All the more reason to recall Lincoln's words and remind ourselves of this vision, stubbornly not giving it up for lost.
We Quakers haven't exactly gone through a civil war, but we have had a number of severe divisions, as a result of which (as Kevin pointed out) we're often appealing to the same history and the same Quaker language and drawing very different conclusions. Kevin's post urges us not to let divisions demoralize us, and I agree.
In two periods of my service with international Friends organizations—ten years with Friends World Committee for Consultation and seven with Friends United Meeting—I visited hundreds of Friends communities, and I found among them many Friends who, with varying degrees of stubbornness, would fit Kevin's descriptions of people as different as chalk and cheese according to their preferred interpretations of core Quakerism. But over all those years, I caught glimpses of progress as well. Maybe we won't be reading from the exact same page anytime soon, but there are many Friends who are at least looking at each other's favorite pages....
Some of us in our tight categories simply haven't heard that there are other ways of being Quaker. Among other important accomplishments, Friends World Committee for Consultation consistently offers Quakers opportunities to meet and consult across the traditional lines that Kevin's post cited, but how many of us are even aware of these opportunities? Looking at our theological divisions from my home on the Christian side of things (dare I even say "evangelical"?), I've run into many so-called liberal or universalist Friends who haven't deliberately rejected a Christian Quaker testimony, but simply haven't even had a decent chance to encounter and consider it. (Let's face it: authoritarian religiosity, toxic biblical malpractice and Christian nationalist heresies have not helped.) If we get to know each other better, you might still not agree with my spiritual priorities, nor I with yours, but at least it won't be from ignorance...
... and there is no reason we can't work for peace and justice together along the priorities we do share, which is important in a world with so much pain and bondage. Friends in Portland, Oregon, for example, are crossing categories in advocating and acting for refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers.
When I was at Friends United Meeting, I remember being startled at how often the occasions when liberal and evangelical Friends were irritating each other actually boiled down to differences between urban and rural communication styles, and not just theology. Learning to accommodate these differences in styles won't overcome every theological gap, but at least we can clear away some of the misunderstandings.
Few divisions are absolute. Some of us live in the overlaps. I began my life as a Friend in the unprogrammed side of the Quaker world, among predominantly liberal Friends (though my mentors in that community were deeply Christian), but now I've spent most of my fifty years as a Friend in pastoral, programmed meetings. I'm not alone in my dislike of being defined by conventional categories. Over the last 21 years I've been writing this blog, I've seen more and more bloggers, traveling Friends, retreat and workshop leaders, authors, and others helping expand opportunities for lively Quaker conversations and new understandings of leadership, community, and calling. (Emily Provance and Windy Cooler, just for starters, and, as always, Martin Kelley helping us stay up to date.)
Are genuine seekers, waiting on the Holy Spirit (whether in quiet receptivity or in total desperation!), ever all that far from God and each other, regardless of their worship styles? When we resort to faking it for the sake of conformity, and either start hiding in the silence or retreating behind our Sunday routines, the differences in style and language are most obvious—and matter the least.
We share other significant challenges. Liberals and evangelicals alike suffer from widespread ignorance about our spiritual and intellectual roots in the "hard work of George Fox" mentioned by Kevin. Sometimes we prefer to stick with a few selected sound bites if we know even that much. We allow our internal conceits and conflicts to obscure our most important audience: those who have never heard of us. We sometimes tolerate lazy mediocrity in our administrative systems and communications, a mediocrity we would not accept in our secular lives. Sometimes our Quaker exceptionalism makes us unaware of other faith communities that have pulled ahead of us in addressing our signature concerns. Saddest of all, too often we can describe Quaker ideals eloquently but can't point to a church or meeting nearby that actually lives them out.
What do you think? Will we continue to drift apart, or will the overlaps increase? Tell us about meetings and churches where newcomers and long-timers say "I'm so glad I'm here!"
Here's an item that takes me back fifteen years, to the summer of 2010. That was the year I stayed in Elektrostal, Russia, the whole summer, not attending the Northwest Yearly Meeting sessions in the USA, and thereby able to experience the smog caused by that summer's fires in the region's neglected peat fields. The item: "How Peat Elektrified the USSR."
I've been seeing and hearing a lot about the theme of hope recently. Sometimes the message is "hang on to hope!" Sometimes it's more like "I've given up hope." It's made me think about how hope relates to reality and to faith.
The USA has been through some rough times in its nearly 250 years as a country, but in my lifetime, this may be the scariest. In previous crises, the danger may have been high (my first memory of national danger was the Cuban Missile Crisis) but at least there seemed to be competent people in charge. Now the people in those top posts seem to have a lot more fun generating crises than managing them. And some of them presume to bless this scene in the name of the Prince of Peace.
In fairness, neither corruption nor crises are anything new. The genocide in the Gaza Strip and in Al-Fashir, Sudan, are just the latest examples of what God already knew in this scene after Noah and the animals disembarked from the ark:
Genesis 8:20-21(My emphasis) Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humans, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez really brought this biblical realism home to me last summer, as I described in this post, The long defeat, part one. She was listening to a sermon by Len Vander Zee. As she tells it,
Len was quoting Celeborn and Galadriel in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, saying: “together through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.” Tolkien expanded on this in a letter to a friend: “I am a Christian….so I do not expect history to be anything but a long defeat, though it contains…… some glimpse of final victory.”
In 2 Corinthians, Paul talks about the contrast between hope and reality in his own experience, shortly before charging his audience with the ministry of reconciliation:
2 Corinthians 4:8-12, 16-18 We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For we who are living are always being handed over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us but life in you.
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So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For our slight, momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen, for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
Death continues to roam the globe, among guilty and innocent alike, shredding credibility from those preaching too glib a picture of hope. I remember a blunt statement by T. Canby Jones: (paraphrasing from memory): Genuine Christian pacifism requires coming to terms with one's own death.
So: does hope have anything to do with today's reality? Yes, I believe it does. If we hope for good outcomes, and work toward them, we're not required to seek a guarantee that everything will change for the better. Hope doesn't require denying reality or concealing failure. Somehow I'm sure that in God's economy, no act of kindness goes to waste, but we may not see the fruits ourselves.
I love this quotation from Evelyn Underhill, via the Daily Quaker Message for October 24, "Love cannot be stopped."
One of the holy miracles of love is that once it is really started on its path, it cannot stop: it spreads and spreads in ever-widening circles till it embraces the whole world in God. We begin by loving those nearest to us, end by loving those who seem farthest. And as our love expands, so our whole personality will grow, slowly but truly. Every fresh soul we touch in love is going to teach us something fresh about God.”
I quoted Paul saying "...what cannot be seen is eternal." I think this is where hope and faith are related. In the letter to the Hebrews, the writer says, "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." My own hope is for God to see a reason to modify that reflection in that Noah's Ark story, because it will turn out that humans might cease being inclined toward evil. I have no idea when and how enough of us will head Paul's call to become ministers of reconciliation, and enough hearts will be changed, so that cruelty is banished from human community. The apparent lack of realism in this vision doesn't mean that I shouldn't hope in that direction; it's just that I recognize that there will almost certainly be many cruelties and many deaths between now and its fulfillment, and I shouldn't pretend otherwise or gloss it all over with Christian clichés.
Maybe what I'm really asking for is the borderline between earth and heaven to begin melting, as in Revelation.
In the meantime, I gain hope just by reading the list of heroes of faith in the beginning of the eleventh chapter of the letter to the Hebrews. Today I saw something new to me in one of those heroes... Hebrews 11:11: And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. Sarah and Abraham had faith that literally bore fruit as God had promised. I believe Jesus' promise to me that he is trustworthy; therefore I take him at his word and trust him.
The traditional interpretation is that the only sure hope is for eternity, but I am impatient, and I believe that the more we hope, the more we'll get "some glimpse of final victory" even in this present age.
Philip Gulley, If America Were Great (1). "Do you know what it means to be a Christian? I don’t need to tell you this because you already know. But I’m worked up, so I’m going to say it anyway." ...
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