A New Year

Any resolutions?

What makes a good resolution?

Christmas in Barnesville

Only three days late ...

We had a lovely Christmas ...

We went to ecumenical Christmas Eve services organized by the Barnesville Ministeriam at the Presbyterian church, where the Rev. Andy Wood is the pastor. We love Andy and he feels like our friend because he hangs out with Quakers. Ela and Bill, who are both very talented musicians, and who used to work at Olney, performed on the cello and whistle. Bill makes his own whistles, which look like piccolos. Needless to say, Bill and Ela were wonderful. The whole service was lovely-- the storybook church with stained glass windows, the traditional Christmas carols .. Joy to the World, Silent Night... and readings about the birth of Jesus ... the glow of lit candles at the end ... very "tender" in the Quaker sense of the word. They even rang the old-fashioned bell at midnight ...

Barnesville was pretty and idyllic on Christmas Eve, with the lit wreathes and big stars made of white lights attached to the lampposts along Main Street, the road glistening. Even the lopsided, decorated Christmas tree with colored lights on the corner added a touch of whimsy.

Christmas day was nice and I think (hope) everyone liked their presents. I liked mine. I read The Financial Lives of Poets, which I loved, except that (male) author treats women as objects--I felt like saying, come on, already ... is there anything more to the fictional wife than a "tight bod" and "hot bod" and that she's "cute" and that other men find her "hot" and that the protag. wants to have sex with her? And the other surface things: she likes to shop because she has "issues" from her childhood and she's good with their young sons (which makes him jealous because he wants the attention)? What is she like as a person? What's in her mind and her soul? And all the other women in the book are the same: "hot" Amber the HR woman, and the son's hot second grade teacher whom he wants to ... you know .. and the "hot,' "Nordic" blond Bea who .. guess what he wants .... and it's simply depressing that in an otherwise great book, where the men are immediately drawn as fully human, and yet there's not one woman who is more than a body. It wasn't deliberate either, I don't think, as he goes to pains to make this fictional hero sympathetic. But that's my rant.

Sophie's flight in from Baltimore was delayed so we had a big rush getting to Jane and Clyde's for Christmas dinner. As Jane said, after two years, it's a tradition! Bill and Ela also came and there was more music. Clyde, who is a retired music professor, played the piano, Jane sang (beautiful voice), their daughter Susan played the flute and Ela and Bill again played the cello and whistle. I lack the musical gene, so I listened. It was a lovely, old-fashioned event in the big high-ceiling living room--we even had a fireplace--and I don't think I can remember ever having had such a musical Christmas, filled up with so many Christmas carols. And I was thinking how nice it is that we all share a cultural heritage of Christmas music: People from farflung parts of the country can gather and we all know the same songs ... Something to think about. I like to think the music touches people with some of the true, pure sweetness of Christianity at its best.

Amish Grace and forgiveness

I hope everyone had a good Christmas.

In the book Amish Grace, which is about the shooting of 10 and killing of five Amish girls at the Nickel Mines schoolhouse in 2006, we see the Amish dwell with some wonder on how much easier it can be to forgive someone you don't know for a big crime than to forgive the people in your community for small transgressions.

I was a religion reporter at the time of the shootings and the Christian News Wire overflowed for awhile with Christians (white, privileged males) stunned and brimming with revelatory enthusiasm for this display of ... Christianity inherent in the Amish forgiving the killer and his family. I remember not being too forgiving of these pundits ... This Amish forgiveness is a revelation? Huh? Isn't this, like, .... you know, "dude," your FAITH? You've been bombastically blowbagging on this wire service about Christianity the whole time I've been a religion reporter and it takes the Nickel Mines shooting for you to "get" what forgiveness is ... ie, the heart of Christianity, what Jesus-died-for?

I remember after 9/11, first hoping fervently that it would be found an act of domestic terrorism, ala Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. My thinking was that if it were domestic terrorism, we'd avoid a war. When I discovered it was Islamic terrorists I realized OK, being a military state, the US will have to drop some bombs on Afghanistan, but let's pray it's short and quick. Beyond that, the passage about "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you" and ... significantly... your lap will be filled with good things, pressed down and flowing over ... rose unbidden to my mind almost constantly. I did feel a forgiveness that had nothing to do with reason and everything to do with living in the spirit. I was surprised to find the rest of the world--even the Christian world--not with me on this.

At that time, I thought, as the Amish later did, well, who am I to forgive? I didn't lose anyone in the attacks. And--how is it that I can forgive this horrendous act and yet become incandescent with homicidal rage when a teenager cuts me off on the highway, causing me to fishtail into the lane with the oncoming 18 wheeler? I would certainly have vaporized that clueless teen, though he clearly had no malice towards me, in an instant. Or why was it so hard for me to forgive the person in my old meeting who stood up shaking with rage over the FUM employment policy but who couldn't see that I felt just as marginalized as a gay person when I heard an Easter message denying the resurrection? When that person told me I was wrong to feel marginalized? When that person dismissed the Israelis and the Palestinians and said they "just have to learn to get along," but then attacked FUM in the most scathing terms and said we had to split from them? Was that such a big deal?

I think of the Browning poem," Soliloquy of the Spanish Courtyard," in which one cloistered brother hates another for no good reason: "Grr, there go, my heart's abhorrence! Water your damned flowerpots do! If hate killed, Brother Lawrence, God's blood would not mine kill you!" Brother Lawrence's offences include needing to go trim his myrtle bush and inquiring after the Latin name of parsley ... in word, he innocently grates on his antagonist's nerves.

When I first read this poem as a college freshman, I saw the narrator as completely other ... and while the intensity of his hatred is extreme, I now realize we all have a touch of him inside us.

I think it's popular to denigrate the Amish--perhaps they speak too strongly to our longings, so we have to keep reminding ourselves that evil patriarchs and pedophiles mingle among them, as well as liars, drug addicts, oppressors and scoundrels... but I think, collectively, the Amish have much wisdom to offer. I do ponder, as they do, how we can be so unforgiving over the small stuff. Any thoughts?

Transformation: Inward of Outward?

Marshall Massey made the following comment in response to the blog on Amish Grace and Quakers: To adopt the [Amish] practices is, I think, to mistake the outward for the inward. Friends have historically had their own avenue to humility — the avenue of quietism, a stilling of our selves inspired by a powerful recognition of our own fallenness, and by a sense of our tremendous every-moment dependence on our Lord. It is to this, and not to outward tactics, that Friends need to turn.

Christmas, because of its garb, is a good time to think about outward wrappings and inward presence.

During Christmas, outward wrappings are more distinct than during other times of the year. Our houses are often transformed with trees, wreathes, advent calendars, pine boughs, candles, eggnog, mistletoe, creches, beautifully wrapped gifts and other signs of the season. Often our touches are old-fashioned or nostalgic--an idealized 19th-century village under the Christmas tree, a touch of a Nutcracker in either our music or a wooden replica of Tchaikovsky's figure, a viewing or reading of The Christmas Carol. We associate these outward signs with inward states:

--The Dickensian Christmas represents conviviality, family harmony, good spirits, fellowship. We are longing to be surrounded by healthy community and loving family.

--The shepherd and magi Christmas represents the conjoined simplicity and grandeur of the holy, the sacred made incarnate on earth, the sacred available through the everyday things of life. It is God's love alive and available in the here and now. We long for the sacred in life. We long for an extended season of goodwill to all men and women. We long for a just world.

--The trees, the pine boughs, the candles, etc., those elements borrowed (or stolen) from the pagan, represent our love of the living things of the world, our longing for light and life during this darkest period, our longing to incorporate earth love and joyfulness into the sacred.


During the Christmas season, we hope that putting on the outward form of what we long for will transform us inwardly--individually and collectively-- into what we wish to be. I think primarily this happens unconsciously--we don't think "I'm putting up this creche because I want all babies in the world to be treated kindly" or "I'm drawn to buy this colorful print of Dickensian carollers because I want to live in a more convivial world." But I do think we long for a world where everyone is cared for, community is strong, the material goods of the world flow abundantly, the earth is protected, and joy abounds.

Of course, we know that many marriages fall apart during the Christmas season. Many children can't come home, because no matter how beautiful the packaging, the underlying poison is too deep. We know the world is a highly flawed place. If anything, the beautiful packaging of Christmas can underscore-painfully- how far we are from the ideal.

The great question is: Can the outward form change the inward person--can the dress transform the soul? Some say that the great distinction between Christianity and the other two religions of the book, Judaism and Islam, is Christianity's persistent belief that the inward soul of a person can and must be transformed, that in fact the salvation of the world can only occur when people undergo the soul transformation --a new way of seeing--that leads to the true outward change ... of everything. The other religions, it is said, put more faith in outward changes--following laws and a set cycle of prayers, fasting, etc.--for softening or least ameliorating, the hardness in the human heart and thus engendering change.

Quakers have always come down hard on the side of the primacy of inward transformation, seeing the outward forms of the faith as "counterfeits." The early Quakers, as we know, saw the rites of the church as allowing people who participated to believe they were godly people without transforming their lives. They saw the rites of the church becoming an end in themselves, not an avenue to transformation. The Quakers swept away these rituals to open room for the essential, to put people in the unmediated presence of God with faith that this would result in world transforming change.

But we Quakers use ritual, and I would argue that sitting in stillness is one of the most rigid rituals of all. Coming from a different tradition, I tend to see the cultural ritualism of the English all over the faith--try introducing the tiniest variant or "programming" into a meeting for silent worship. So my questions is: what privileges silent worship over other rituals?

Also, like Marshall, I believe inward transformation is the key: I believe in inward to outward, not outward to inward. The most beautifully trimmed Christmas tree in the world will not magically mend broken hearts in a family. On the other hand, is there a transformative possibility or quality to the outward? For instance, many people think some transformative quailty was lost when the Roman Catholic sisters began adopting "civilian garb" and the church moved from the grandeur of the Latin Mass. What do you think?

Amish Grace and Quakers

Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy by Donald Kraybill, Steven Nolt, and David Weaver-Zercher focuses on the Amish capacity to forgive after a troubled non-Amish man shot 10 and killed five Amish girls in the Nickle Mines schoolhouse in 2006. To explain the Amish ability to forgive, the authors delve into Amish theology.

I am struck, as I have been before, by similarities between the Quakers and the Amish. Both are peace churches that believe in simplicity, community and integrity. Both seek to "finish" the Reformation by bringing the Christianity back to its earliest beginnings, stripping it down to its essentials.

But the Quakers and Amish have also forked away from each other. Most Quakers don't express simplicity through distinctive dress, habits or transportation. Most Quakers have gone the way of the wider culture in valuing individualism over community. Quakerism from its start embraced equalitarianism, whereas the Amish have always been patriarchal. About 15% of Quakers have moved away from the centrality of Christ to embrace a full-fledged universalism, while the Amish are all devoutly Christ-centered. Many of those Quaker churches that still embrace the centrality of Christ have moved away from Quaker distinctives that Amish groups share, such as no paid clergy, opting instead to hire a minister.

As with the Amish, the Quakers, I believe, put forgiveness at the heart of their faith practice. Peace churches, almost by definition, replace revenge and retaliation with forgiveness. But what if the Quakers adopted some of the Amish practices to underscore forgiveness? Would this help us?

1. "In the Amish faith, the authority of the community overshadows the freedom of the individual."(92) "'Individualism,' said a 40-year-old Amish father, "is the great divide between us and outsiders.'" (93) The primacy of the community is stressed in the following ways:

a. verbal expressions of personal faith are seen as prideful, as if one is showing off one's religious knowledge. Individual interpretations of the Bible and personal testimonies are seen as "haughtiness." "For the Amish, genuine spirituality is quiet, reserved and clothed in humility, revealing itself in actions rather than words. Wisdom is tested by the community, not by an individual's feelings, eloquence of persuasion." (94)

b. crafting your own prayers is seen as prideful. They use the Lord's prayer.

Some of the practices that Amish Grace pinpoints as laying a groundwork for forgiveness are:

2. Emphasis on the New Testament, and especially the gospels. The Lancaster Amish Lectionary focuses on Matthew 1-12, which includes the Sermon on the Mount, for the first 12 weeks of every year. What if we focused on the Sermon on the Mount for three months of the year?

3. Frequent recitation of the Lord's prayer, as noted above. This would bother some, as a rote prayer might seem a "counterfeit" faith, but a thoughtful and frequent recitation--a mindful praying-- might be helpful.

Given that a roomful of Quakers can be markedly lacking in humility, would we do well to adopt some of these practices?

George Fox: Ponder in the Heart

But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. (Luke 2:19)

"And you may see how Mary wrapped Christ in swaddling clothes, and how tender she was of the heavenly birth, conceived by the Holy Ghost. And must true and tender Christians, that receive Him in the spirit ... she kept all the sayings that were spoken of Christ and pondered them in her heart. And so should every good Christian." From Mind the Heavenly Treasure: Thoughts for each day from the Scriptures and the eight volumes of the writings of George Fox", compiled by Gary Boswell.

Here again, we see the thoughts of early Quaker George Fox expressed through concrete imagery. Here, he draws us to visualize and dwell on Mary's "tender" care and clothing of the infant Jesus, advising us to be as tender in our thoughts as she was in her physical care for a fragile infant. Here, the vulnerability of Jesus is laid bare. Do we tenderly cradle his beliefs--in forgiveness, mercy, love, peace, joy, abundance, compassion--or do we dash his infant's head against a rock?

It also strikes me that Mary ponders things "in her heart," fusing together the intellect and the emotions. In her body, the embodiment implied by her pregnancy and childbirth, she also grounds God in the physical. The infant Jesus stands for ideas that don't make sense--which are dismissed as impossible, as fantasies, as for "some other time," in the cold light of pure rationality, but which did make sense for the here and now to Fox and his followers and which do make sense when we enter the upside-down kingdom today. They speak to the deepest longings of our hearts. They are possible here and now.

I visited a mosque a few years ago. It was a beautiful mosque, unlike the others I had visited, which were basement rooms in office buildings. This mosque was light filled and open and empty, with a deep, thick tawny Oriental rug on the floor. It had a stark, sacred feeling. Afterwards, our guides told us that Jesus was a revered figure in Islam and recounted a story from the Quran of the infant Jesus, under a date tree, speaking, in a miracle, to tell those denigrating Mary as a fallen woman that she was a virgin impregnated by the Holy Spirit. From birth, he protected his mother

I thought at the time that in the Christian faith is a birth story lean in miracles--a visit by an angel, a virgin conception and a choir of angels breaking good tidings of great joy to a group of shepherds. But Jesus, the center of the story, is simply a human baby born in very humble circumstances. He is protected by his mother, a model of how we protect our faith with gentleness, mindfulness and nurture, a model of how he needs our care, how he needs us to be his body. Also, an infant can't survive with partial attention--it demands our dedication.

Gratitude and Giving

This is a response I posted on Jeanne's blog on giving, but since it fit with the theme of gratitude, I thought I would post it here.

Jeanne,

I appreciate your blog, and I hear what you are saying about elites supporting other elites ... Quakers supporting Quakers. I do get angry when I see the symphony hall built in my home town from a major donation and know the money came from the profits of racist fear-mongering in real estate years ago. They helped wreck the city and now they’re putting up a fancy venue? And in a city full of housing that you wouldn't let your pet live in ... a symphony hall? Then, like Chuck, I do remember I appreciate Mozart --but that too, I recognize this as a class-based taste ... and why should educated class tastes be supported ahead of others?

But as I mull this, I think of how healing it was for me for my Quaker meeting to support its own after coming from a church that always seemed to want to take my money. Take and take. It meant a great deal to me that the meeting would support my children going to Quaker camps ... and it meant a great deal to my children. When my meeting cares for me that models how to care for another ... but I agree, that care has to push out to the "least of these."

Also, my husband works for and two of my children attend Olney Friends School, hardly an elite boarding school. It's a school that provides a true Quaker education to kids who might not have any other opportunity to get one--because they would might be turned down for admission at the elite Quaker schools. Not because they couldn't do the work, but because they couldn't pass the test or look good enough on paper, which in itself might be a class issue. Or because they want an alternative to an elite school. I see hope for the world in schools like Olney. However, Olney does depend on support from other Quakers--it can't make it on tuition alone ... so I struggle with this. I hate to see needs compete and want to believe there's abundance for everything important, that we don't need to divert from one charity to the next but to divert funds from the latest consumer good so we can support more charities, especially these days.

As I write this, I realize how tight the budget is at Chez Reynolds, tighter than in decades. I think many people are feeling the pinch. All the same, I think we could look at our spending creatively and find ways to support more groups ...While I think it takes a leap of faith to believe the resources are here, I believe they are here. Do you believe they're here?