Antietam, September 17th

(Midweek Meditation September 2024)

Fingers of mist hang in the hollows. The orange orb of the sun is edging above South Mountain. Sam, Chico, and I head off across the wildflower meadow, a riot of color a month ago, now a buffet of seed heads. The only sound crickets signaling the approach of fall.

Suddenly, cannon fire, commemorating the opening salvo of the bloodiest day in American history. A flock of tree swallows leap from the power line in alarm. Sam and Chico stop midstride, alert to danger. Was it a morning just like this 162 years ago when thousands of young men awoke to their last dawn?
 
Peace returns. The swallows settle. The dogs step forward warily. I send up a prayer of gratitude for this beautiful place and remind myself that even in these fields that once ran with blood, evil did not have the last word.
 
We walk past the cemetery where the Mumma family rest. On that terrible day, Samuel Mumma Sr., his wife, and eight children, members of the “Dunker” peace church, fled the mayhem only to return to find their farm destroyed, home and barn burned to the ground. But their story didn’t end there. They received no compensation for their loss because it was the Confederates who did the damage, but they rebuilt with hard work and the help of their neighbors. Forty-four years later, James F. Clark, formerly of the 3rd North Carolina Infantry, wrote to the Mummas to beg forgiveness for his role in the devastation. Samuel Jr. forgave him wholeheartedly. “As to your burning our house, we know that in doing so, you were carrying out orders,” he wrote. Evil did not have the last word.
 
We head towards the Roulette Farm. On one side a field of peacefully grazing cattle, on the other a bank of brilliantly yellow goldenrod. I think of Nancy Camel who sheltered with the Roulette family during the battle. Born into slavery in 1817, she was freed in 1859, by her enslaver, Andrew Miller, and went to work for Miller’s neighbor, William Roulette. After the battle, she returned to the farm with the Roulettes and spent the rest of her days with them. When she died in 1895, she left the bulk of her estate -- $867.04 and her own home -- to the children of her enslaver and her employer. One account said these families “treated her as kin, not as a possession.” Evil did not have the last word.
 
The mist has dissipated and the sun is above the horizon when we drive home through Sharpsburg. We pass campaign signs and I feel rising beneath the surface calm of this small town angry echoes of that day in 1862. I realize there is no “last word.” There is just the next word, and the next, and the next. I ask myself, what can I do in the “next” of my time, to help ensure that evil does not have the next word for the generations to come?
 
I told [the Commonwealth Commissioners] I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars… I told them I was come into the covenant of peace which was before wars and strife were.  – George Fox, 1651

Committing to the Path

Thirty years ago this month I first crossed the threshold of Goose Creek and began my journey with Quakerism. I was a young mother of two little ones, unsure of which parts of the Christian story I believed but wanting to give my children some sort of spiritual grounding. I have always been a spiritual seeker. Over the years my search had taken me through some strange and interesting places, but nothing had stuck. As a young adult I left all of that behind and for a decade or so devoted myself to having fun and getting ahead. Then I had children.

I first tried the local Methodist church and it was everything you could want in a church – lovely people who were my neighbors, a big jolly Sunday School, and within walking distance of my home. But I just couldn’t bring myself to unquestioningly pass on what I thought of as “boilerplate Christianity” to the tender minds of my children. However, while I was no longer a practicing anything, I still took religion very seriously. Curious about Quakerism, I asked my dear friend, Catherine, to take me to Goose Creek.
 
My first Meeting for Worship was completely silent. Friends sitting quietly, the clock ticking, the fire crackling. I loved the simplicity of the meeting house, the beautiful surroundings, and the friendly people. In spite of the long distance from my home, I came back the next week with my children, and the next and the next. A year or two later, I became a member.
 
Now, 30 years have passed, my children have grown up, and I am still driving 55 minutes each way to worship at Goose Creek. What keeps me coming back? If I was hoping for peace and serenity (as I think I was), I have been sadly disappointed.
 
To be a member of a faith tradition that values spiritual integrity above all is very challenging. In the silence and in the absence of imposed doctrine, there is no place to hide. To be a Quaker, I discovered, is to be permanently experiencing metanoia, usually translated as “repentance,” but more accurately described as the process of undergoing a "change of mind" so as to have a wholly new perspective on the world, life, and humanity. This is slow, difficult work, but I will always be grateful for the Quaker crucible through which God leads me in this lifelong process.
 
Becoming a member was an important part of my journey. It was like a marriage. Once the shine of Quakerism had worn off and inevitable disappointments and frustrations came along, I remained faithful to the commitment I had made. The fruits have been of infinite value: membership in a loving and imperfect faith community that continues to love me in spite of my imperfections, a school of life among deeply wise teachers past and present, and, above all, an awareness within the spaciousness of Quaker practice of the Spirit guiding me.
 
Will I always be a member of Goose Creek? I cannot say. One thing I have learned on my Quaker journey is that the label doesn’t matter – being faithful to the leadings of the Spirit does. Lead me onwards, Holy One, lead me onwards.
 

Here. Now. This. In Zimbabwe.

I recently came across a story about a good man deeply embedded in his Here (my birth country of Zimbabwe) and the particular Now of that land – a time of deep and chronic economic troubles and political instability. In a short GoFundMe video his son, Cian, tells how his dad, Charles, lives in a little house in the Eastern Highlands in Zimbabwe with no internet and just enough solar electricity to power his lights and charge his phone. He doesn't have much money, but he lives a rich life.

 

Charles builds beehives and gives them to any of his neighbors who wants them. Then he teaches them how to keep bees ethically and sustainably, without spraying pesticides on the plants they pollinate. To complete the virtuous cycle, he buys the honey from the beekeepers at a "more than fair" price, processes and bottles it, and sells it in the capital, Harare. According to Cian, he barely makes a dollar for each jar because he believes in keeping the honey affordable in a country where many people live in deep poverty.

If you have Facebook, you can watch the video here. 

 

While the primary purpose of the venture is to provide the local people with a steady income in a country where 80% of adults are employed in the "informal" sector (code for "jobs are few and far between"), the benefits go well beyond the pecuniary. The beekeepers gain valuable practical and business skills, of course, but more fundamentally they develop deep reciprocal relationships with each other. These are relationships built on trust and extend far beyond the episodic and transactional. Here is a local community working together to solve a compelling problem and in working together their lives are enriched and their community is strengthened.

 

Wendell Berry described it thus: "A good community insures itself by trust, by good faith and goodwill, by mutual help. A good community, in other words, is a good local economy."(1)

 

On a more personal level, I am interested in what motivated Charles to choose this life. I don't know his background, but I suspect he could easily have settled into a comfortable middleclass life somewhere other than in Zimbabwe. (After all, most educated Zimbabweans have done so.) His son credits the upbringing his grandparents gave his father, but there are plenty of people brought up by seriously good people who regress to the mean of "good enough" in their own lives.

 

I think it must go deeper than that. At some time Charles made a choice not only to stay in a country on the brink of collapse but to live in a remote corner of that land and embed himself deeply in his local community where he uses his gifts -- his knowledge and skills -- to build that community. I am sure he must have his share of problems and disappointments, but I believe he receives as much as he gives and is a happy man.

 

As I was watching the video, the story in the Gospel of Matthew about the rich young man came to mind. The young man comes to Jesus and says that he has done all the usual things – obeyed all the commandments including the one enjoining him to love his neighbors as himself - but somehow, he senses that it is not enough. "What do I lack?" he asks Jesus. "If you wish to be perfect," Jesus replies, "sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

 

The next words are haunting: "When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth."

 

Usually when I read this story, I get stuck (guiltily) on "sell your possessions and give to the poor" but what strikes me upon reading it this time is the sadness and loneliness of the young man as he turns away from Jesus. For one brief, shining moment, he was offered a life that promised community and purpose – a "wholeness" not tied to material possessions -- but he was too attached to his privilege and lifestyle to embrace what was being offered. Somewhere in his heart, he knew he had made the wrong choice.

 

How often have I turned away from the prospect of a deeper, richer life because I am afraid to let go of my privileged, familiar life deeply embedded in Empire?

(1) Wendell Berry (2010). "What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth", p.144, Counterpoint Press

Here. Now. This.

I come from a family that for generations has been on the move. My great grandfather, Benjamin Cheney, a shoemaker by trade, migrated in the mid-1860s from Northamptonshire to South Africa with his wife, Eliza, and son Walter. Almost exactly nine months after the World War I armistice, Walter accidentally sired my father. I say accidentally because he and my grandmother, Alice Elma, married only five months before my dad was born and shortly thereafter Alice decamped with baby Jack to shack up with another man in what was then the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. (My husband, Simon, and I agree that Dad was probably a “celebration” baby.) Dad stayed put in Southern Rhodesia then Rhodesia then Zimbabwe for 61 years but eventually migrated back to South Africa and ended up cold (in both senses of the word) in Canada which is where my sister and her family had migrated. 

True to type, at the very first opportunity (and with a lot of luck), when I was 21 I migrated to the United States where I lived in various localities in and around Washington, DC, before moving with Simon in 1986 to Washington County, Maryland. We’ve been here ever since, and we agree that we will make our stand right here on our 3 1/3 acres along the Potomac River. They’ll have to carry us out feet first. 

Yet, in spite of having spent almost 40 years in Washington County, I still feel like little more than a sojourner in my Here. I know only the surface details of this place. Somehow, I have continued to inhabit my wayfaring stranger identity – observing the local folk a bit like an anthropologist, dabbling in its history, gaining a passing knowledge of its ecology, participating not at all in its politics and very little in its cultural life. To me, news is what I read in the New York Times (although, given the near death of the local newspaper it is hard to know what is going on around here). Even my Quaker meeting is not only in another county, it’s in another state, necessitating a 55-minute drive every Sunday. 

What about the Now? Quite frankly, Now requires a sort of internal stamina I don’t always feel I have. It is obvious that we are at a critical turning point in our planet’s existence and the history of humanity. We are wandering deep in the woods of tectonic change and can barely find the path let alone see where we are going. Climate change, environmental degradation, species extinction, massive income inequality, scary mind-sucking technology, and toxic politics all contribute to widespread angst and the feeling that we are all doomed. This is not limited to those of us who live in the US. No matter where you are in the world, the struggle is real. For want of an alternative (and not even our technological geniuses can help us), we are Here. Now. 

Which brings me to This. New England Friend, Noah Merrill, attributes our widespread anxiety to a loss of “a sense of the sacredness of our journey here on this planet.”(1) He points to Quakerism as a faith tradition that provides the tools for “sacramental living” – “for recognizing that in every moment there’s the possibility for the in-breaking of something beyond us.” Quakerism, he says, is a prophetic path that takes “the condition of the world and all of the suffering and all of the injustice and all of the joy and all of the possibility, and all of the reality of global climate disruption and the massive inequality that we experience as human beings, and also says, ‘but this is not all that’s possible. Something could be different’.” 

What does sacramental living mean for me in the Here and Now that I inhabit? I agree with Wendell Berry who wrote: “If you want to do good and preserving acts, you must think and act locally,” because thinking and acting “globally” is impossible. He adds, “This calls for local knowledge, local skills, and local love that virtually none of us has, and that none of us can get, by thinking globally. We can get it only by a local fidelity that we would have to maintain through several lifetimes…”(2) 

I don’t have several lifetimes. I don’t even have very much left of this lifetime. But I can, at least, in whatever time I have, be faithful Here and Now to This. What can I do Now to help open the door to an in-breaking of something new in the Here I have grown to love? What is my This? 

(1) Noah Merrill: "How Quakers can transform the world." QuakerSpeak video, 2014, Friends Publishing Corporation.

(2) Wendell Berry: "Out of Your Car Off Your Horse: 27 propositions about global thinking and sustainable cities." The Atlantic, February 1991

The Simple Truth

Pinned above my desk are these words: 

“To be simple is to fix one’s eye solely on the simple truth of God at a time when all concepts are being confused, distorted and turned upside down.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
 
“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” – Matthew 6:22 (KJV)
 
Today, in our troubled times, I find these words both a comfort and a challenge. Bonhoeffer was writing in Nazi Germany more than 80 years ago. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew laid down his words close to 2,000 years ago. Yet, the message is as true today as across the millennia. Simplicity comes from faithfulness to the Light Within.
 
It was the testimony of simplicity that most spoke to me when I first came to Quakerism. With two small children, living on a tight budget in a crumbling Victorian heap, my life was anything but simple. Both internally and externally I lived in chaos. The simple life beckoned but remained elusive. I got rid of possessions, winnowed down my wardrobe, shopped in bulk, attempted to impose some sort of discipline on family life, and longed to live in a tiny house that wasn’t such a drain on my energy and our resources. At some future date, I promised myself, I would achieve simplicity.
 
Fast forward 25 years. My children have left the nest, I am retired, and the crumbling heap is no longer my problem. My husband and I live in a little house with few needs. I have “achieved” my goal: in the world’s terms, my life is simple. So why doesn’t it feel that way?
 
Each morning, I wake up to news of death and destruction around the world. I am exposed to hate-filled speech across the political spectrum. Neighbors subscribe to completely different “truths.” I struggle to withstand psychological manipulation at every turn. I witness with horror the rising tide of violence and desperation. No amount of frantically responding to multiple calls to service can quell an overriding sense of helplessness in the face of approaching apocalypse.
 
In his day, Bonhoeffer faced all of this and more. But he kept his eye and mind on the simple truth of God all the way to his execution at the hands of the Nazis. We will probably not have to pay such a high price for faithfulness, but that path of inward simplicity, of singleness of eye, is available to us if we will but take it. In true simplicity, we enter the deep silences of the heart. Here’s how the Quaker Thomas R. Kelly put it:
 
“Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts news shadows and new glories upon the face of men. It is a seed stirring to life if we do not choke it.” 

Liberal Friends - the Lake Wobegon of Quakerism

I have just returned from a retreat at Pendle Hill where we spent a lot of time identifying our own and each other’s gifts with a view to living lives more faithful to the leadings of the Spirit. There was much deep listening and reflection, and I think that most of us left with the wind under our tails, filled with good resolutions to put our gifts to work in our meetings and our world.

Predictably, Reality was awaiting my return, eager to disabuse me of any elevated notions I may have acquired in the rarefied atmosphere of Pendle Hill. It wasn’t only reality in the form of laundry and bills and the annoying persistence of my own bad habits; it was also the ubiquitous nature of the Lake Wobegon effect that is part of liberal Quakerism, where everyone is “above average” and where gifts are routinely allowed to gather dust on the shelf. To be more explicit, in our rejection of the hierarchies that developed in the Religious Society of Friends around recorded ministers and appointed elders and overseers, we’ve rather thrown the baby out with the bath water. Any naming or nurturing of gifts has become occasional and incidental rather than an intentional part of the spiritual life of the meeting community.

Which is not to say that liberal Quakers do not have good reason to balk at anything that might set an individual apart. The shadow of the Great Separation still looms over us, even though it happened almost 200 years ago. Within a decade or so of the founding of Quakerism, George Fox and other early leaders found it necessary to “herd the cats” by creating structures to impose some sort of orthodoxy. And just as well they did, because it is highly doubtful that Quakerism would have survived without some grownups in charge. But, with organization comes hierarchy, and with hierarchy comes exclusivity. The next thing you know, the elders are at the door looking for red petticoats and spinets. When the Great Separation finally erupted in the late 1820s, it was in large part a revolt against the authority of the wealthy and prestigious elders of Philadelphia.

So where are we, the spiritual descendents of the Hicksite rebels, today? Are liberal Friends co-existing happily in Lake Wobegon where all are equal and “above average”? Not really. Wherever humans gather, hierarchies develop, even if they are implicit rather than explicit. All the way from the monthly meeting level up to yearly meetings, there are folks in liberal Friends organizations who are clearly in charge, whose word carries more weight, who control much of what happens in the community, who are, in some cases, members of an entrenched elite. The vast majority of these folks are committed and Spirit-filled Friends with no ulterior agendas, who have reached their positions of authority by virtue of their commitment and, yes, their gifts. But in making the process implicit rather than explicit we have also lost the accountability that accompanies the kind of formal naming of gifts that is still practiced today by conservative Friends.

I have had numerous conversations with our conservative brethren about the appointment of elders and the naming of ministers and, in theory at least, it sounds very good. There is a stated understanding that the gifts of eldering and vocal ministry belong to the meeting, rather than to the individual, and should be used for the spiritual edification of all. As such, the meeting is responsible both for nurturing the gift and for ensuring that the individual who is the steward of the gift exercises it under the guidance of the Spirit, rather than their own egos. Having never been a member of a Conservative meeting, I have no idea how this works in practice. I suspect imperfectly, since it still involves members of the human race.

While there has been a wary revisiting of the idea of recording ministers in recent years among liberal Friends, I don’t see any real momentum towards it happening and, all things considered, I’m not sure it would be the best thing for us. Unless we can also resurrect the structures and culture of accountability that must accompany such a practice, the perils are legion. Rather than trying to resurrect the past, perhaps liberal Friends should build on what is best about the tradition that we have established. Our openness to diversity in how each of us expresses our relationship to the Divine is easily translatable to an openness to the many gifts with which we are endowed and which should be placed equally at the disposal of the Spirit for the building up of our faith communities and the world.

Traditionally, Friends have identified vocal ministry and eldership as the primary corporate gifts, but I believe that any true gift of the Spirit, be it ”public”, such as vocal ministry, or more private, such as the ability to be a loving presence, can and should be identified and acknowledged in some way. The benefit of bringing the gift to the attention of the meeting and to the bearer of the gift is that it places a responsibility to nurture the gift on both the meeting and the bearer. Sometimes, too, people are unaware of their own gifts and it takes someone else to point them out. And once the gift has been acknowledged, it can be held in trust by the meeting community.

The closest we have come to naming gifts in liberal Quakerism is through our Nominating Committees. The ideal is that the committee recognizes the gifts of each person and then, after much prayer and discernment, places them in the position or committee where their gifts can be most usefully deployed. This hardly ever happens. People usually end up on the committees in which they are most interested or where they have been since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Nominating conversations are often little more than hasty phone exchanges. We struggle over the issue of term limits versus acceding to a person’s “call” to be on a committee indefinitely, even if “call” could be more accurately described as “habit” or “comfort”.

Somewhere in all of this, the Spirit is lost and gifts play no role in the conversation. It also presupposes that almost all gifts can only be nurtured and recognized in a committee setting. This essentially leaves those not able or willing to do committee work on the outside, relegated to Quaker limbo, the Undead or at least the unacknowledged.

The questions I am left asking are: How can we do this better? How can we develop the close relationships that allow us to discern each other’s gifts, to nurture them and exercise them, and to enjoy their fruits in community? How can we all come to that deep place where we truly understand, in the words of the apostle Paul, “there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” ? (1 Cor 12:4-8)

Why I Keep Coming Back

My husband, the senior warden at the local Episcopal church, enjoys twitting me on certain aspects of Quakerism. Why, he asks, drive an hour and a half round trip to sit in silence for one hour? Surely, if Quakers care so much for the planet and value simplicity, they should foreswear the consumption of fossil fuels to get to meeting, and instead hold virtual Meetings for Worship where each of us stay home and quietly meditate in front of our computers, using Skype if we feel moved by the Spirit to share. In my ongoing effort at pretending to be a good Quaker, I take this in good part and refrain from suggesting that Episcopalians could just as easily stay home, read the service from the Book of Common Prayer, and listen to the sermon and sing along with the hymns on YouTube. They wouldn't even need Skype since spontaneous sharing is not a noticeable feature of the Episcopal Mass. No, such a thought has never crossed my mind.

Yet, on a perfect Spring day such as we had this past First Day, with God obviously and extravagantly present right here in my garden, the temptation to conduct my own private "Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Plants in Dire Need of Transplanting" was very strong. But, as usual, I found myself in my car (a VW Jetta TDI, 40 miles to the gallon) making the 45-minute drive to meeting where I sat with the good Friends of Goose Creek for the requisite hour, and once more drank deeply from the living waters that flow through Meeting for Worship.

Inside the meetinghouse, the deep silence of the adults was accompanied by the sound of the birds singing and the laughter and voices of the children playing outside. I could feel us being lifted and embraced by the Spirit, and I marveled at how we were all gathered in the great wheel of life where our own individual boundaries have no meaning and where life and death merge seamlessly. The silence was broken just once by an older Friend who spoke quietly and simply about how, even as we struggle to make sense of our individual lives, God is there to guide us in green pastures and beside still waters. Surely goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives.

After the close of Meeting for Worship, I was moved to share a little of what I had experienced in that hour. Goose Creek is an old meeting and I spoke about how Friends have sat in silent worship there for more than 200 years, each generation listening to the laughter of its children. I mentioned some of the dear old Friends who were gone from our midst, but who were once the children laughing outside, bringing energy and joy to our little community. Then, in one of those moments that occur with such amazing frequency at Quaker meeting that I can not doubt that the Spirit is present among us, I was passed a card to read that came from a beautiful arrangement of peonies on the fireplace mantel. The flowers had been placed there in memory of a member of our meeting who would have celebrated her 100th birthday this week. Emily the child once laughed and played, she grew to become an integral part of the meeting, and when she passed away at the age of 97, she was buried in the burial ground across the road from our meetinghouse. The tangible presence of all the generations of Friends old and young, living and dead, pressed in upon us.

As we moved on to sharing joys and concerns, a much-loved Friend stood and revealed that he had been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Just as we were about to hold him in the Light, the children - about 20 strong - burst through the door, filled with energy and health and high spirits. We paused as they joined their parents and then, sensing the presence of the Spirit, they, too, entered into that sacred space where we are palpably in the presence of the Divine, their gloriously bright flames of Life and Love turbocharging the healing power of our prayers. Together, the young and the old, the sick and the healthy, the living and the dead, became One.

As I drove the 45 minutes back from meeting, I carried with me that which I had experienced in the silence and after. My husband returned from his Mass, uplifted by the words of his priest and enriched by the power and beauty of the liturgy. In the cool of my garden, I weeded and dug and transplanted with God. To myself, I sang the words of the great medieval mystic Juliana of Norwich: "All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well."