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