Closer to Each Other Than Language Allows

Photo by Claire Phipps - clairephipps.com

People think of Quakers as loving, peaceful, friendly types (our full name is, after all, the Religious Society of Friends).  And we are all of those things. We’re also human—full of imperfections, confusion, and fear. We don’t all see things in the same way, and our history shows that sometimes those differing views have torn us apart. This week, one branch of the diverse tree of Quakerism—Indiana Yearly Meeting—is considering such a break. For those Friends, the issue that is dividing them is homosexuality.

I’ve just returned from my own North Pacific Yearly Meeting (NPYM) annual gathering. For five days, Quakers from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana worshiped, sang, and played; remembered Friends who died last year and welcomed newcomers; learned about local, national, and international Quaker efforts to promote peace and justice; and reconnected with old friends and made some new ones.

For many, these annual gatherings are a time to take a break from life’s daily demands and to renew spiritually. With the theme of “Listening in Tongues,” we were encouraged to “prepare ourselves for seeing, feeling and hearing unaccustomed perspectives with the tenderness we would wish for our own.” Our Friend-in-Residence, Benigno Sánchez-Eppler, urged us to listen beyond words, beyond the “limited monolingual comfort of our own monthly meetings,” for the similarities of our common Quaker ancestry. We heard from Friends in Pullman-Moscow Meeting that listening in that way can be healing. They reported that as they’ve dealt with conflicts in their meeting, “We are closer to each other than language allows.”

We faced our own challenges with language that separates us as we considered whether to affiliate with Friends General Conference (FGC). After a year of examination of what “affiliation” would both require and offer, we still stumble over that word as well as what it means to be an “independent” yearly meeting.  We decided to discern further over this next year, setting aside the idea of affiliation and instead exploring what kind of  “relationship” we want with the varied branches of Quakerism, including FGC.

As we left our gathering last Sunday, another branch of Quakers in the West, Northwest Yearly Meeting, began its annual session. Their agenda was to include consideration of the current state of affairs in their Yearly Meeting in the area of sexual ethics and same-sex relationships. As with Indiana Yearly Meeting, these conversations likely were fraught with conflict, just as they were twenty-five years ago in North Pacific Yearly Meeting. It took us eight years, but in 1993 we came to unity to revise our Faith and Practice to state that Quaker meetings could take the relationships of same-sex couples under their care (translation of Quaker-ese: same-sex couples could get married) following the same processes as for heterosexual couples.

This week, Indiana Yearly Meeting (IYM) has been considering a split as a way to deal with its members’ differences regarding not only same-sex relationships but also the full participation of gays and lesbians in the life of their monthly meetings and churches.  I first learned of IYM’s proposal to separate into two groups in an article by Stephen Angell in the June/July 2012 issue of Friends Journal. Angell outlines the timeline of the “Indiana Yearly Meeting Schism” there as well as in the Winter/Spring 2012 issue of Quaker Theology - The Impending Split in Indiana Yearly Meeting.  From my reading, it appears that differing views on homosexuality are being cloaked in questions about the authority of the Yearly Meeting over individual meetings.

I’m holding these Friends from Indiana Yearly Meeting this week as they meet to discern how God is leading them.  I hope they can, as Benigno suggested, listen to differing perspectives with the tenderness they would wish for our own.

And I hope that NPYM can do the same as we explore the nature of our relationships with the wider world of Friends. 

Forgiveness Revisited

“Forgiveness is a condition in which the sin of the past is not altered, nor its inevitable consequences changed. Rather in forgiveness a fresh act is added to those of the past which restores the broken relationship and opens the way for the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven to meet and communicate deeply with each other in the present and the future.  Thus, forgiveness heals the past, though the scars remain and the consequences go on.”   ~ Douglas Steere

In 2011, I wrote about forgiveness in response to Douglas Steere’s quote and thoughts it raised during a time of Worship-Sharing at my Quaker Meeting.  That day, I focused on my response to interpersonal conflicts, disagreements, and misunderstandings. Now, after reading the novel The Crying Tree, I’m thinking again about the act of forgiveness in the face of violent crime.

The book’s author, Naseem Rakha, spoke recently at Bellingham (WA) Friends Meeting, giving some background about how she came to write The Crying Tree and what she’s learned from that process. In 1996, she was assigned by NPR to cover the first execution in 34 years of a death row inmate in Oregon.  Naseem’s research in order to write a story to be aired the day of the execution was the beginning of her examination of the death penalty. Eventually, it led her to write a novel based on the Oregon execution and others. Written with the integrity of a journalist and the literary skill of a storyteller, the book delves deep into the complexities of crime, punishment, and forgiveness.

Irene, one of the characters in The Crying Tree, adds what Douglas Steere would call a  “fresh act” when she writes letters to her son’s killer as a way to heal her pain and anger.  The reactions of others to Irene’s eventual forgiveness of him span the breadth of views about crime and punishment, giving readers insight into a wide range of perspectives.

As part of her research, Raseem talked with many people on death row as well as family members of victims.  Their experiences convinced her of the healing power of face-to-face meetings between offenders and victims.

This year, the legislature in my home state of Washington took a first step in supporting such healing by adopting a Restorative Justice bill.  Drafted with leadership from Friends Committee on Washington Public Policy, the law encourages a voluntary process of bringing together certain juvenile offenders and those harmed by their actions. Typically, theses face-to-face encounters also include others in the community, including family and support systems around the offenders and victims. The goal is for these parties to arrive at a mutually acceptable approach—a fresh act­—to encourage the offender to take responsibility for righting the wrong that has been done. 

The story of The Crying Tree is far from my personal experience, and I pray that I never have to endure the pain and sorrow of the book’s characters.  But I know that we all are affected by our culture’s values and responses to crime. Quaker faith and practice calls us to forgiveness and offers some healing alternatives. Recent issues of Friends Journal (March 2012) and Western Friend (June 2012) focused on the long history of Friends’ witness for restorative justice and some of the ways that continues today. Now, I’ve added The Crying Tree as another source for seeking the path of forgiveness.

Occupy as a Spiritual Act

http://occupyphillymedia.org/galleries

 My rural island home in Washington State couldn’t be much further—geographically or culturally­—from Manhattan’s Wall Street.  Last fall, when the first actions of Occupy Wall Street began, the movement seemed like an abstraction to me. After hearing Madeline Schaeffer’s podcast at Friend Speaks My Mind, I’m feeling more connected to this social and economic justice effort.

Fueled by the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse and inspired by uprisings last spring in Egypt and Tunisia, Occupy Wall Street protesters brought their call for democracy to Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District on Sept. 17, 2011. Soon, Occupy groups organized across the U.S. to “protest and change the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process.” All use a consensus-based collective decision-making tool known as a "people's assembly,” that sounds much like a Quaker Meeting for Business.

Madeleine’s audio story describes Occupy efforts in Philadelphia and the influence of Quaker faith and practice on its work. I was drawn by her first words, recounting an outdoor Meeting for Worship at Dilworth Plaza at Philadelphia’s City Hall. Madeleine and other attenders spoke of the power of that worship to assert the Occupy Philadelphia site as “holy ground.”  

Madeleine believes that the Occupy Movement is revitalizing Friends’ understanding of the connection between spirituality and action and that Quakers are providing a spiritual groundedness to this movement. In Philadelphia, that spiritual grounding is evident in tangible ways. “Supporting social change for peace and justice is woven into the fabric of Friends Center,” says Patricia McBee, Executive Director at Friends Center in Philadelphia, of their involvement with Occupy Philadelphia. The Center, just two blocks from Dilworth Plaza, has put its faith into action by offering its commercial kitchen to prepare food, office equipment and services, and space to retreat and “take a breath.”

http://occupyphillymedia.org/galleries

Lucy Duncan, American Friends Service Committee Friends Liaison, coordinates a Quaker tent at Dilworth Plaza. She spoke with Madeleine of her sense that the Spirit is present in Occupy Philadelphia work and that people there are “being engaged in something much bigger than themselves.”  Michael Gagné, director of the new Envision Peace Museum in Philadelphia, believes that Occupy Philadelphia is teaching people decision-making processes that delve into conflict as part of truth-seeking and without violence. Madeleine spoke with others in the movement who look to Quakers to contribute on the front lines of occupations and direct actions to prevent them from becoming violent. As one participant put it, Quakers have tools to do this and “understand that action is a spiritual act, a transformative experience of their souls.”

Friends and others in Philadelphia are using those tools to organize the upcoming Occupy National Gathering. From June 30 to July 4, the Occupy movement will convene in the vicinity of Philadelphia’s Independence Mall for a week of direct actions, movement building, and the creation of a vision for a democratic future. On July 5, the Gathering will conclude by joining Guitarmy (guitar-playing peace activists) for a 99-mile march from Philadelphia to Wall Street. Perhaps Friend Jon Watts will be there with them singing “Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Your Life,” a song that he performed at Occupy DC (http://www.jonwatts.com/2011/faithfulness-quakers-and-the-occupy-movement/). 

I’ll be 3000 miles away from the Gathering, but I’ll be singing along. 

Conflict

Conflict. Disagreement. Opposing viewpoints. I don’t much like any of them, especially when they involve me and those I’m in relationship with. Some people tell me they like controversy, spirited opposition, debate and argument. They say it energizes them, excites them, gets their juices flowing. All that conflict does for me is make my stomach churn.

So, at Meeting last Sunday, when our Worship-Sharing time focused on queries about resolving conflict, I did a lot of deep breathing.   As we settled into silence, we were asked to consider these queries from North Pacific Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice:

When problems and conflicts arise, do we make timely endeavors to resolve them in a spirit of love and humility?

How do we use our diversity for the spiritual growth of our Meeting?

Are we prepared to let go of our individual desires and let the Holy Spirit lead us to unity?

In the silence, I sat with these questions.

Make timely endeavors to resolve conflict? I usually put it off as long as possible.

Use diversity for spiritual growth? I subscribe more to the “birds of a feather, flock together” approach.

Let go of my individual desires and be led by Spirit? Sure, once my fingers are pried away from their grip on my conviction that I’m right.

I know that many people throughout the world face the kind of conflict that threatens their lives. I’m blessed to live in a time and place that is not fraught with such violence, fortunate to rarely encounter hostility in my daily life. And yet, I don’t feel in unity with everyone, at all times. Whether it’s in my Quaker Meeting, at work, in my family, or among friends and community, sometimes tempers flare, opposing views swirl, or anger erupts. When that happens, there’s the familiar churn of my stomach. My heart races, my throat closes up, my head throbs. I’m afraid.

The conflicts most common in my life stir fears of discovering I’m wrong or have made a mistake. I succumb to old beliefs from childhood that there is a “right” way to act or believe, as if there is only one right answer. I fear disapproval and rejection. In introductory psychology, I learned that animals respond to fear in one of two ways – fight or flight. I don’t want to do either, yet engaging with the differences brings a pounding to my chest.

Quaker practice has taught me to listen, to lead with a question instead of defending my opinion. When I remember to ask, rather than answer, I open myself to the possibility that there is something for me to learn.

I wish that the path to resolving conflict wasn’t bordered with so much humility, patience, and letting go. What I know experimentally, though, is that it is in times of conflict, times when I listen deeply to the words and beyond the words, that I grow.