Book Review - Staying True

As far as I’m concerned, the world could use a few more spiritual memoirs. A lot more people of faith writing about their spiritual journeys.  Fortunately, lifelong Quaker Lynn Waddington did just that during the final two years of her life. And her partner, Margaret Sorrel, labored through her own grief after Lynn’s death to bring this story to print in Staying True­—Musings of an Odd-duck Quaker Lesbian Approaching Death.

The title should be the first clue that this isn’t your average memoir. Bruce Birchard, former General Secretary of Friends General Conference, calls it “a spiritual memoir for the twenty-first century,” and I couldn’t agree more.  Lynn took her spirituality seriously (though with a great deal of humor), explored it deeply, and shared it honestly. 

For Lynn, life was about constantly discerning her true leadings, and she generously takes her readers along on that journey.  I’ve turned down the corners of many pages to be able to return to her stories and experiences that speak to me.  Here’s one example:

We are seekers, not finders. For every profound experience I’ve had, I’ve been left with deep questions.

Lynn also wrote eloquently about something that often is beyond words, that experience of the presence of the Divine. She did find the vocabulary, though, when she wrote about one day in early adolescence when she took her questions of her identity with her to a favorite spot along the Delaware River:

I felt the calm seep into me as it usually did. And then I was wrenched open. . . I realized I was trembling and crying. Sweat was running down my sides. I was seen through and through. . . . Every flaw of my being was visible, but the fear that brought was dissolved by the sweetest, most tender love I had ever known. . .This was God—who saw me uniquely and bent down to touch me alone.

In Staying True, we have not only an account of the path of Lynn’s spiritual journey through young adulthood, her professional life, her role as a parent, and her relationships, but she also invited us in to her deep seeking near the end of her life.  Although she continued to ask questions about what she was meant to do, she also shared the peace she felt from her knowledge of being held in God’s love. 

Staying True is a source of wisdom, comfort, challenge, and more than a few belly laughs as well as tears.

To find out more about Staying True, visit Plain Speech Press.

Afterthought #9 - National Quaker Week

Just discovered that we’re two days into the sixth national Quaker Week (28 September to 7 October).

Alistair Fuller, Head of Outreach Development for Quakers in Britain says: “Every year we hold Quaker Week to encourage Quakers to talk about how their faith shapes their daily life and witness in the world.”

Throughout England this week, Quakers are wearing badges stating “I’m a Quaker – Ask Me Why.”  The Quaker Week website explains people wearing the buttons “…will be keen to share their personal faith journey and will be ready to say how they put their faith into action to work for social and political change.”   

British Friends have a theme for the week, too—Looking for a Spiritual Home­—focusing on their meetings as “communities where individuals can connect deeply with one another and with the Divine and are free to become most fully themselves and can explore together what it means to be a Quaker today.”

I don’t have one of these badges, but this seems like a good week to wear a T-shirt made by folks at Salmon Bay (Seattle, WA) Monthly Meeting. It’s my way to celebrate the spiritual home I’ve found among Quakers. 

Revealing the Bones of Truth

A new edition of Juliet Barker’s 1994 biography, The Brontës, tells a story about Branwell, the brother of Charlotte, Emily and Anne.

In 1834, Branwell began to study painting with a member of the Royal Academy of Art. The student painter sketched a portrait of his sisters and penciled his face in among theirs. When it came time to paint, he brought color to the faces of his sisters, but rubbed out his own, blending it into the background.

Eventually, the painting ended up in London's National Portrait Gallery, and now visitors can see that Branwell’s teacher failed to instruct his pupil how to mix the pigments properly. They shone for a while, but became transparent with age. Now, the delicate pencil sketches beneath, including the artist’s own face that he’d erased, are gradually re-emerging.

One review of the updated Brontë family biography used Branwell’s story as an analogy to praise the book. The reviewer compared Barker to a skilled restorer working on a family portrait, “gently rubbing off the lurid colors of myth and gossip, and revealing the bones of truth underneath.”

Revealing the bones of truth underneath. That’s what happens for me in my writing, at least when I silence the critic that sits on my shoulder and follow where the words lead me. As I strive to sketch portraits in words, I bring color to places I’ve been and people I’ve known. I work to tell some of the untold stories of struggle, of faithfulness, of hope, of fear. Mine and others. Sometimes, though, my words cover up more than they reveal. Unlike Branwell, I have a writing teacher who nudges me to peel away the pigments that hide the full story.

And when I remember that Spirit is with me when I work, I’m strengthened to let the stories emerge, revealing the bones of truth underneath.

The Largest Clearness Committee in the History of Quakerism

The subject line of a recent e-mail from my friend, Jon Watts, caught my attention:  Can I Continue to Be A Musician? 

This Quaker singer and songwriter explained he’s at a crossroads after four years of ministry through music and the success of his latest album, “Clothe Yourself in Righteousness.”  Even more than any of his previous works, Jon’s latest explores faithful Quaker practice and serious transformation.  He’s had great turnouts at concerts and good sales of his music.  Equally gratifying for him is hearing that the music and words are affecting the way that Friends think about their faith, culture, and identity.

But, while spiritually nourishing, Jon’s music making is not financially sustainable. He’s given up his apartment, his car, his health insurance. He figures he has enough money to get through the autumn, but he needs to make some choices about the future.

“As a Quaker,” Jon wrote, “I’m trying to make this decision in a discerning way, to find the way forward that I can’t imagine, the way forward that I can’t arrive at just through reasoning.”

Quakers’ term for this way of deciding is spiritual discernment, a practice grounded in the central Quaker belief that the experience and guidance of God is available to every person, that each of us has an “Inner Teacher” who can lead us to the answers we seek. As Patricia Loring wrote in the Pendle Hill Pamphlet, Spiritual Discernment, it’s how we “…discriminate the course to which we are personally led by God from our other impulses.”

Jon and I learned a lot about spiritual discernment in Marcelle Martin’s 2007 Pendle Hill course, “Discerning Your Call.” In addition to reading Loring’s pamphlet and Callings by Gregg Levoy, we practiced discernment with clearness committees.

Clearness Committees are a long held Quaker practice in which a group of Friends meets with a person confronting a dilemma in life. In the Pendle Hill class, many of us were seeking clarity about work. Other times the process is used for those facing marriage/divorce adjustments or decisions, family/parenting difficulties or other major life changes. I’ve requested Clearness Committees over the years when my family contemplated moves and when I considered applying for graduate studies in writing.  I’ve also served on committees with Friends seeking clarity about work and calling.

Here’s how they operate in many Quaker meetings.

The person with a concern (focus person) will request formation of a Clearness Committee, usually under the direction of a committee in the Meeting.  The focus person gives the committee a written description of the issue needing discernment, and together they identify a small group of people who might best work with the focus person to access that Inner Teacher.  They all meet, usually several times, to discern together.  Unlike many decision-making processes, though, the central role of the Clearness Committee is to ask questions of the focus person. Their job is not to give answers.  

Suzanne Farnham’s book, Listening Hearts:  Discerning Call in Community, gives helpful direction about such evoking questions, questions that only the focus person can know the answers to. Some examples include:

What hints, messages, or signs have you received about this?

Where do you sense the most Life, or Spirit?

When you imagine God looking at you and your choices, how do you imagine God seeing or responding to them?

The “listening hearts” role of the committee is most powerful when committee members set aside personal opinions and listen deeply to the focus person’s responses.

At least, that’s how Clearness Committees typically operate. But Jon is using contemporary tools for his discernment process and is creating a virtual Clearness Committee. A big one. Perhaps The Largest Clearness Committee in the History of Quakerism.

I can just picture Friends dismissing Jon’s approach to this valued Quaker process. Until a couple of years ago, I would have, too. But, as I wrote in one of my first blog posts (I'm Not a Birthright Blogger), I’ve been convinced that this electronic media age offers some tools to nurture and connect us in our spiritual journeys.

Before you write off Jon’s invitation, take a look at his State of the Art Report. It’s a fine example of that important first step in the discernment process.

I’m going to accept Jon’s invitation. I look forward to trying it and hearing how it works for him. I expect I’ll learn some new ways to listen.

Afterthought #8 - Healed by Our Stories

Sometimes, often times, I question why I write. The volume usually rises when I’m writing those tender places - fear, loss – and when I doubt that my story has anything to say to the world.  That’s when I turn to the file of quotations in my laptop; here’s some wisdom I found there this morning.

“ I have felt the pain that arises from a recognition of beauty, pain we hold when we remember what we are connected to and the delicacy of our relations.  It is this tenderness born out of a connection to place that fuels my writing.  Writing becomes an act of compassion toward life, the life we so often refuse to see because if we look too closely or feel too deeply, there may be no end to our suffering.  But words empower us, move us beyond our suffering, and set us free.  This is the sorcery of literature.  We are healed by our stories.”  

                                          ~ Terry Tempest Williams 

                                          from “Undressing the Bear”  in An Unspoken Hunger

Worship-Sharing Through Song

Early Quakers likely would have been shaking their heads if they’d attended meeting with me last week.  Some present-day Friends might find my meeting’s last-Sunday-of-the-month practice peculiar, too. That’s when, instead of an hour of unprogrammed worship, people of all ages in our group worship through song.

Singer and song-writer Peter Blood understands singing and worship. He and his partner, Annie Patterson, are active members of the Society of Friends who consider their performing and songleading to be a form of music ministry and social activism. They co-created Rise Up Singing, a spiral-bound collection of words, guitar chords, and sources to 1200 songs that reflect Quaker testimonies of peace, community, and equality.

Blood also knows the history of singing among Friends. He explained in a 2002 Friends Journal article that Quakers in the mid-19th century viewed instrumental and choral music as forms of frivolous "worldly" recreation that led them away from God.  Fortunately, many Friends abandoned this belief by the beginning of the 20th century. Today, Quakerism is blessed with a rich variety of Quaker musicians such as Blood and Patterson. Their website lists many by name as well as by region and also links to those who have been interviewed on Mark Judkins Helpsmeet’s program “Song of the Soul” at Northern Spirit Radio.

 

Still, many Quakers in the unprogrammed (some call it the “liberal”) tradition remain ambivalent about singing during worship and are uncomfortable with the idea of group singing as worship. As Blood wrote in Friends Journal,

“Friends may acknowledge the possibility that an individual Friend may be

led by the Spirit to sing a song during Meeting for Worship—and feel moved

and uplifted when this breaks into the life of a meeting. Questions begin to be

raised when other Friends join in a song during Meeting. And probably most

un-programmed Friends would have real problems with calling out

hymn numbers—even spontaneously—during Meeting for Worship.”

Yet this is exactly what happens at my meeting on “Singing Sunday.” For several years now, we’ve reserved that day for a full hour of singing. Our “hymnal” is a photo-copied collection of favorite songs from a wide range of spiritual, social, and musical traditions, including a number from Rise Up Singing (we’re probably breaking copyright rules, but we always identify the source).

Recently, we modified our practice to include worship-sharing interwoven with song, similar to the style Blood and Patterson teach at workshops at Ben Lomond Quaker Center and Friends General Conference.  After fifteen minutes of silence, we pass out our “hymnals” and encourage people to "offer up" to the group the name of a song that they feel led to request.  We ask for a period of silence before and after the song when the requester and others present can reflect on and speak about what the song resonates within them.

Last week, we began our worship-sharing through song with a request for "Lean on Me" (by Bill Withers).

As we sang of pain and sorrow, problems, and heavy loads to carry, the lyrics spoke to the care and mutual support we find in our Quaker community.

Other requests included Simple Gifts, I Dreamed of Rain, Somos El Barco, Morning Has Broken, A Song of Peace, and a rousing rendition of George Fox. Friends’ sharing, sometimes accompanied by tears, spoke to the ways that Spirit can touch us through music. 

Whenever I’m at Singing Sunday, my Lutheran heritage takes over, and I ask that we close with a doxology.  The one in our meeting hymnal is different from what I sang as a child, though. The version we sing was a gift from Paul Tinkerhess who shared it one year at Friends General Conference:

            Praise bogs from whom all waters flow.

            Praise bugs above and frogs below.

            Praise lily pads and all by luck

            who thrive while seated in the muck.

Amen.

Writing Community

A couple sat in the lobby of the Captain Whidbey Inn, thumbing through materials describing the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA in Creative Writing. I was among the students there for the August residency, a ten-day intensive of classes that kicks off the Fall semester. I chatted with these prospective students about how my studies there are helping me to become a better writer. One of their questions has stuck with me.

Directed Reading Class, August Residency
photo by Dave Beach

“What does it mean that this is a writing community?”

Community is a term that people use a lot today.  Many talk of it as a sense of belonging, a desire to be known and supported by those who live near them or by people who share common interests.  The phenomenal growth of Facebook, Yahoo groups, Linked In, and a host of other Internet services is evidence of the yearning to connect with others. But what is this writing community that the Whidbey program tries to foster?

I look to my own understanding of community shaped largely by my experiences among Quakers.  We place a high value on community, including it along with simplicity, peace, integrity, and equality as the principles that guide our lives (what we call testimonies).  Here’s how Moorestown (New Jersey) Friends School describes the testimony of community:

Community means that we are responsible for the human beings that

share the planet with us. This means we must work together to help each

other become the best people possible. Quakers examine their own attitudes

and practices to test whether they contribute as much as they can to the

needs of the wider community; including addressing issues of social, political

and economic justice. In school this means that we all must work to

demonstrate respect for others and a willingness to listen to other points

of view, as well as serving the broader community. 

Quaker writer and teacher, Parker Palmer, describes community this way:

Community is a place where the connections felt in the heart make

themselves known in bonds between people, and where the tuggings

and pullings of those bonds keep opening up our hearts.

I heard myself using similar language with the prospective students in response to their questions about Whidbey’s “writing community.” 

The bonds among the students are strong. During the August residency we felt many connections in our hearts as we supported each other through news of the death of one classmate’s brother and a cancer diagnosis for the best friend of another student. When I learned mid-way through the residency of the death of my dear friend, Greg Ewert (see Sept. 9, 2010 post), I was comforted by several in this writing community.

At the Whidbey graduation ceremony, student speaker Mandy Manning reminded us of the many personal “tuggings and pullings” that she and her classmates had endured and how they had supported each other.

In workshops, craft classes, and at student readings, we work together to help each other become the best writers possible. Like the Moorestown Friends School, we do this with “respect for others and a willingness to listen to other points of view.” Probably helps us become better people, too.

Finally, just like the Quaker testimony of community, the writing program advocates serving the broader community. At Whidbey, we call it literary citizenship, and it’s evident in the efforts of students, faculty, and guest faculty who work to promote literacy, give voice to those rarely heard, and cheer on other writers at all stages of development.

I’m not claiming that my MFA program is a religious organization (Quaker or any other).  But since writing is so intertwined with my spiritual journey, I’m grateful to have a writing community that shares and reflects the values of my Quaker community. If that’s what those prospective students are seeking, they’ll fit in well at the Whidbey Writers’ Workshop.