Chloe Schwenke is a many-faceted person: she is a transsexual woman, parent, and spouse, as well as a longtime Quaker, an ethicist, and an expert in international development in the fields of gender, governance, peace-building, and human rights. She lived and worked in Africa for 14 years, and has carried out project assignments in 34 developing and transitional countries worldwide. Chloe has published extensively on topics of transgender people and international development, on moral values in international development, and on leadership and integrity. In addition to her work as a development practitioner, she has served for ten years as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and the University of Maryland. She was also a Fulbright professor at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda from 2005-6.

Jacob Stone, co-director of Ben Lomond Quaker Center, conducted this interview with Chloe via email on behalf of WF. She will be visiting Quaker Center in September to lead a program on gender.

Q. How long have you been a Friend? Which meeting do you attend? What brought you to Friends?

My first exposure to the Religious Society of Friends was during the Vietnam War era, when I was constantly under threat of being drafted. I was very moved by the witness of Quakers against that war and for peace, and their rich way of presenting peace as so much more than the absence of war. Many years later I met a Quaker woman who actually invited me to Friends Meeting of Washington, where I was immediately in my element. I first became a member in 1989 when I was living in London and worshipping with Westminster Friends; I’ve since been a member at Langley Hill Friends Meeting in Virginia (BYM), Durban Friends Meeting in South Africa (CSAYM), and now at Adelphi Meeting in Maryland (BYM).

Q. What does gender mean to you? How do you understand the difference between gender and sexual orientation?

My favorite “gender question” response was by the Welsh historian and writer, Jan Morris; I won’t even attempt to do better. Jan was a transsexual in the early days of that term; she transitioned from male to female and had sexual reassignment surgery in 1972:

“To me gender is not physical at all, but is altogether insubstantial. It is soul, perhaps, it is talent, it is taste, it is environment, it is how one feels, it is light and shade, it is inner music, it is a spring in one’s step or an exchange of glances, it is more truly life and love than any combination of genitals, ovaries, and hormones. It is the essentialness of oneself, the psyche, the fragment of unity. Male and female are sex, masculine and feminine are gender, and though the conceptions overlap, they are far from synonymous.”

As for sexual orientation, this is quite different in sense and in feel – not so much about who you are, but about who you are attracted to. Many transsexuals do not change their sexual orientation when they transition from one gender to another; I went from being a “heterosexual male” to a “lesbian female” in the eyes of the world, even if my mind and spirit have remain unchanged since birth.

Q. How did you experience your gender as a child?

My early awareness of gender was one of confusion, as I tried to express myself in ways that seemed authentic, only to be strictly channeled into all things “boy”. I grew up in a traditional military family, and there was little room for reinterpreting what masculine might mean.

At the age of 7 I asked for a toy ironing board and kitchen set, which my parents agreed to. I still have the 8mm film of a very happy me, ironing away. The next year I told my dad (a colonel in the Marines) that I wanted a ballerina costume, and tolerance gave way to a firmly “directed” socialization which later included two years at a military boarding school. I experienced my authentic gender only in glimpses, and in labels such as “the sensitive boy” and the “introspective boy”. I had mostly girls as friends, and could hold my end of a teenage girl chat over the phone with the best of them, but this did not go without critical notice. Again and again, I ran into unrelenting pressure to “be a man”, and barriers that would not yield.

Q. How did you first realize that something didn’t fit?

There was no early moment of clarity that could be described as transgender enlightenment. Instead, it might be described as a pattern of coming into an awareness of more and more uncomfortable edges in my male existence, and progressively fewer experiences of wholeness. I knew quite clearly from the age of seven that I was “different”, and from that age my awareness of that uncomfortable (and ultimately unbearable) sensation that I now know as “gender dissonance” gradually grew and grew over decades. In time, I felt quite hollowed out by this, living a less and less authentic life, until that life was no longer sustainable.

Q. How does it feel now that you are done with sexual reassignment surgery?

Being “done” is a funny way to think of a gender transition! After all, many transgender people never elect (or can never afford) to have sexual reassignment surgery, and others feel quite comfortable in that androgynous space between gender polarities. For me, the path was unambiguous – I knew myself to be firmly at the female end of the gender spectrum, and bringing my body into alignment with that awareness has been close to a feeling of reincarnation.

Since my surgery last year, each day is indescribably more centered and spiritually grounded, now that I am wholly free from the constant hurt and deep discomfort that comes with bearing that artificial male persona. Still, I will never be able to reclaim a lost girlhood, never experience teenage female angst, and never feel wildly pretty in a young woman’s skimpy dress. In that sense, gender transition is never “done”; I always have to live with my personal narrative of gender dissonance, of a past that in many important ways did not belong to me.

Q. What’s your experience of being transgendered among Friends? How has your meeting responded to you? How have Friends beyond your meeting supported you in this journey? How have Friends disappointed you in this journey?

Friends, once they find out that I am a transsexual (it isn’t obvious), react in a wide variety of ways. Generally, Friends have been supportive. Specifically, our meeting – Adelphi Monthly Meeting of Baltimore Yearly Meeting – went out of its way to carefully work with my wife and me to create a safe, caring, and understanding space within the meeting community to receive us once I did come out. To a very large extent, that was successful. There were a few Friends who questioned why I could not express my femininity in some aspects of my life without having to actually become a woman, but once it was explained to them (by others, in most cases) that being a woman was not an “aspect” but was and is at the heart of who I am, they seemed to understand, or at least accept. A few men in our meeting remain uncomfortable around me, but fewer all the time. In fact, the meeting has largely just moved on with the life of the meeting, leaving me the space to be the woman I know I am, and accepting me wholly as that woman.

Among the most moving and certainly the most spiritually grounded Quaker embraces came from the 2010 midwinter gathering of the group known as Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC). I felt so completely accepted, respected, and cared for by these Friends, and still do.

Q. You have been very public about your journey as a transgender woman. To what extent do you see this as a ministry among Friends? Among others?

In addition to working in international development, I am an ethicist by profession. At the center of my teaching and work is the testimony of integrity. For years that testimony rang false, as I exhorted my students to a respect for integrity while personally living a fundamentally false existence. Finally being whole in my body, mind, and spirit feels like a rebirth, as a heavy and ultimately crushing burden has now forever gone.

The joy that comes with that rebirth leads me to share my own strange and difficult journey across the gender barrier as a personal, spiritual narrative of joy and opportunity. It has led me – through careful testing by a Quaker clearness committee – to a new life of service, working with transgender people in the poorest countries in the world. These transgender people are among the most beleaguered, neglected, and misunderstood people on earth, and the new non-profit organization – Trans~Dignity – that I am now setting up will bring much-needed services and opportunities to them, as way opens and funding is found.

Q. You are married and have two teenage children. To the extent that you want to share this personal information, how has your family responded to your transgender status?

My gender transition is also my family’s separate but equally challenging transition, although I get nearly all the attention. If Adelphi Meeting had not exercised such care, it’s likely even Quakers would have neglected to reach out to my wife and two children. Their stories are important, and the constancy of their love for me is a light that shines very brightly indeed, but it is not for me to describe their stories. I will say that we remain a committed, loving family, and the initial awkwardness of our family’s change to two moms has given way to a normal routine, differentiated mostly – and importantly – by no longer having a deeply depressed, inwardly imploding parent. My joy in life is uplifting, and while it doesn’t negate their continuing grief in losing a husband and a father, it does offer them some new and special spiritual gifts, which they are lovingly open to receiving.

Chloe will be leading a workshop titled, “Gender, the Search for Self, and the Search for Acceptance” at Ben Lomond Quaker Center September 10-12. Call (831) 336-8333 or mail@quakercenter.org for more information or to register.

June 2010 Issue

by Robert Griswold

There is a candle in your heart ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul ready to be filled.
You feel it, don’t you?   -Jelaluddin Rumi

No words of mine or any other person can fully convey the experience of the Inward Light to another. Each person must find this experience by themselves. Nevertheless, we all may profit from what the experience of others has taught, if we put it up against our own. These experiences reveal to us valuable insights into our own natures and to the complexity of the Inward Light.

Experience of the Inward Light teaches us that we are not stuck solely in a relationship with self. There is that to be found within which is awesomely real and commanding. And this is not a fabrication of our minds. It is experienced personally but it is not subjective or shaped by the ego. This experience gives us the certain understanding and courage to act lovingly and become tender toward all creation. This does not mean that we will never have another weak moment. It means we will know our weak moments to be weak moments.

We can stand on solid ground because we are connected to what is real. The Light is a relationship with Divine Reality. We are not smug because the self is humbled, and we are confident that we can act with justice, mercy and humility. This sense of being grounded or centered is what Friends mean when they use the word Truth. And a life lived in relationship with the Eternal is better than living forever as a being grounded only in self. If we are present now to the Divine, we are already resurrected and have no need of a heaven by and by in the sky—that desire is just another ego projection.

We need the support of others, the love of others, the loving correction of others that we obtain by living in community with others and worshiping with others. Spiritual growth requires the discipline of spiritual practice. If love isn’t coming out, being expressed in our daily lives, then the Seed will not fulfill its purpose of nourishing the world. It will wilt and die.

Lessons From The Inward Light

Experiencing the Light is not a nice thing.

At least it has never started by being nice to me. Nearly every experience of the Light in my life has broken open the comfortable place where I was resting; smug in my own wisdom. These experiences have shown me to be shallow, vain, arrogant, presumptuous and blind to the suffering around me. And blind to my own suffering as well. This is not nice! The work of the Inward Light or the Light of Christ is to break us out of the illusions that keep us in bondage to fear, addicted to distractions, busy with building our pride, and that allow us to avoid the covenants we might have with others that could make us their neighbor. In doing its work the Inward Light requires us to stop telling ourselves those little lies that let us off the hook of responsibility. It causes us to doubt that our business (or busyness) is the best use of our time on earth. It brushes aside all those habitual notions that lets us believe that we are different, separated from and superior or inferior to those people who…(you fill in the blank).

The Inward Light is not our conscience.

Our conscience is a “should” voice in our heads that we have incorporated along the way. Conscience is often stuffed with moral maxims and frequently these are contradictory, allowing us to choose the ones most convenient to our purpose. The Inward Light straightens out this mess. The Inward Light lets us know who we really are and our relationship to Divine Reality, and thus integrity lets us jettison conventional notions and act with clarity and responsiveness to a new awareness. Sometimes we have to be very patient to get to what the Light would have us know, but Friends’ faith requires us to prefer integrity to what may seem to be expedient action.

The Inward Light speaks to our condition.

Without the Inward Light we are in a condition of trying to guide our life following an inadequate authority– the inadequate authority of self. Self is the aggregation of notions, excuses, reasoning  that we have acquired in the process of growing up.  Instruction and misinstruction by parents, teachers  and peers; ideas we have come across or have been  dumped on us by TV, newspapers, books; experiences  of hurt, disappointment, and loss; habits of worry,  self-defense and meaningless self indulgence – these  are some of the things we pack in the bag of self. The  Inward Light weighs these things showing us what  they are and what we must surrender so that they no  longer subject us to their deception.

The Inward Light requires from us a discipline.

This is not about sitting quietly once in a while until we  get a new idea. The Inward Light can transform us— but only if we have disciplined ourselves to truly be submissive to the leadings we are given. The Inward Light isn’t our local grocery store of the intellect where we can shop for good ideas of things we might do. The discipline of silence and openness must be practiced over and over, day after day, week after week, alone and with others. The Light nurtures a Seed in us but to grow, that Seed must be repeatedly exposed to the Light. This exposure is not over until our life is over. If you are a Christian this is called “taking up your cross.”

The Inward Light comforts us and gives us courage.

As we follow the discipline of the Light and the Seed grows in us, we gain in courage. The fears of self – you know them. “What will people think of me if I do that? “Is this going to be embarrassing?” What if people don’t like me because I’m doing this?” Wouldn’t it be safer to wait until someone else leads and then follow if things seem to be going well?” The problem is that when we follow our fears we never get clear and our fears confine us in a box made of worry and defensiveness. When we follow where the Light leads, the fears of self and for self drop away and we can act to make love manifest in the world. The Light always requires us to risk loving, and in risking love we find true peace.

The Inward Light is not a tool for us to use.

I must confess to a level of discomfort every time I hear Friends ask that someone be “held in the Light.” I appreciate our having a convention that directs us toward a care for others, but I have trouble reducing the Light to a convention. To me this approach seems to change the relationship between me and the Light. My experience is that the Light is a reality that uses me, calling me to account and making clear my path when I have been led astray by reliance on my own notions. Hence, I can understand that if I have knowledge of someone in distress the Light may point me toward an action that might relieve their distress. But I have no power to place them in the Light or hold them there. The Light for me is not something I can do and certainly there is nothing I can make the Light do. It is not something that I have in my possession and thus I cannot give it away.

There is another problem with this convention of trying to “hold ___ in the Light.” This practice sneaks back into Friends’ theology a version of Christian theology depicting the Deity as a remote and powerful being that we can and should beg for favors. In my experience of the Divine, “the Kingdom of Heaven” is no distance away from wherever I may be, unless I am standing in the way. Living in Truth brings real joy into our lives. The Light makes us whole and makes it possible to face what life has to bring – even death. This joy is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” The “peace that passes understanding” comes through the Light.

Robert Griswold is a member of Mountain View Friends Meeting in Denver, Colorado.

[Jesus said] “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you will get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”
-Matthew 7:1-5

One Sunday during worship, a young woman spoke how that same morning she woke to a wing brushing her cheek. A small bird was thrashing about, banging against the glass near her head as it sought to exit her window. She took a towel to guide it out, but the bird slipped between the two sections of the window in its panic. Watching its frightened actions, she broke the window so it might find release. Still it did not fly free. She reached in yet again with a towel to gently set it free, and it took off into the open air.

I carry with me a similar image of a caged bird resisting release. How often do we panic when the Inward Guide offers us freedom? How often do we fight back when the hand of God seeks to move us from the place where we are stuck and damaged? Why do we so fear that which will save us? Impatience and fear are tangled. The holy delight too often is masked.

This same fear colors my relationships. Childhood patterns of finding ways to be invisible lasted long into adulthood. I was slow to sense how stiff my body gets when someone questions me or to be open even to myself when I am angry. Self-knowledge and honesty are central to the spiritual life. Psychologists tell us a lot about “projection.” Jesus tells us to look first to the “log” in our own eye before we attempt to remove the mote in our neighbor’s. Unless we know the byways of our own inner landscape, how can we recognize the path marked by the Spirit?

The recognition of our own motes and logs is not sufficient in itself. Awareness of the Inward Guide is a first step. The sifting – the discernment – is part of the ongoing mechanism of transformation. Yes, there is a day I can mark on the calendar and say that on this day my life changed. But it would have been nothing but a memory without the years of learning to discern which aspects of my life were permeated by bark beetles and where healthy new shoots might grow.

Sifting
When I experienced the leading to take up a ministry of speaking and writing, I was nearly paralyzed by fear, and fear is the central component of what Isaac Penington calls “the enemy” who “kindles great distress.” Fear does not easily let go its hold. Thus, one crucial step is to recognize fear and taste its character. I’ve come to recognize many flavors of fear. Fear can be sharp and alive, a basic reflex which tells us that danger is at hand. Knowing real danger and responding to it with calm action are crucial. Confidence in God, clear awareness of strengths and weaknesses, and practice in ways of dealing with danger, can allow us to react without panic and take leadership when appropriate.

In contrast, some fear is old, so old I can almost smell the dust and mold. Fears of ugly words and of an angry older brother, which were real in childhood, have no weight when examined in the light of adult experience. Yet for too long I treated these fears as if they were still protecting me from some immediate threat. To lay these aside took attention and awareness, but was not particularly hard once I got the knack of it.
So often I imagine how others see me, magnifying my own insecurities and negative opinions. Or I put thoughts in someone’s head which have no basis in reality. I judge them even as I assume they are judging me. I give them power over me.

As I shift my focus to the Giver of Life and away from my imagination, my smile is easier and my words firmer. I step out of a self-imposed invisibility. As a result, I have had to work to rebuild relationships – asking what was meant rather than assuming a desire to harm then fuming quietly; suspending judgment, and offering more of myself rather than expecting the other to be the only one vulnerable. Once more I need to attend to the person in front of me. Relationships cannot be forced or based on one person having power over another. Respect, caring and mutual empowerment thrive in the movement of the Spirit.

Still other fears live and are exaggerated only in my own mind. There might be reason to be nervous, but I am skilled at imagining disastrous scenarios. I either make myself so nervous and upset that I generate the scene I most feared, or I freeze and refuse to participate at all. To set these fears in proper proportion requires trust. This occurs each time I must speak from my heart. It is frightening at various levels, but not truly dangerous. I risk having others disagree with me, or that they will dismiss me as irrelevant or foolish. This has been the hardest set of fears for me to deal with.
More and more often I recognize and laugh at the tapes which replay in my head. But speaking of my faith in public requires I let go, speak what the Spirit requires of me, and trust that I have not run ahead of the Guide. When I can focus on what is needed, then my fears take their rightful place and drop away.

One day, while feeling quite discouraged, I began to doodle the word: AWFUL! That was how I was experiencing the world – things were awful. Yet writing the word over and over, it became a form of prayer. My being shifted and suddenly I saw the AWE which was embedded in my heart. Here I began to glimpse why the Psalmists sing of fear of the Lord: a rightful fear before the mystery and power of the Eternal.

Each one of us must find where our fears lie and seek to discern when they are valid and when they should be set aside. At times the indicators of the path are like marks in the dirt defining the mountain trail. I have a tendency, however, to kick some dust over those small arrows in the dirt when I don’t like the look of the path to which they point. Much wisdom in many traditions besides our own indicates that each time we do this – resist the leading – the harder it is to find the path in the future. And that, ultimately, the habit of kicking up dust will become so thoroughly ingrained that we no longer even see the arrows. Despite my ambivalence, I keep encountering further markers for the journey.

Examples of following the path are plentiful in my life: picking up the phone to call a friend when I am feeling an intense desire to hide; responding to Carl’s suggestion that maybe work I had done for a class should become a book; opening a book apparently at random and finding just the words I need; acting on the sense that I was to travel among Friends – actions large and small.

Fear is by no means the only block to healing or obstacle to attending to the voice of the Spirit. For some it may be anger, or a need to control, or desire for wealth, but the underlying tests for discerning the leadings of the Light are the same. The variations are substantial and, as in my case, professional help as well as community support can be invaluable.

Holding one’s life up to the Light of hope and using of discernment can change everyday actions and make space for radical reorientation, as happened to a man I met when giving a talk. During the Vietnam War, his family and the pastor at a Protestant church he attended all expected him to enlist. Yet he found this action to be at odds with all his pastor had preached over the years. The refusal to enlist or cooperate with the draft changed the course of his entire life, he told us gratefully.

For me, this reorientation was from virtual silence (my report cards from school always complained, “Marge never says anything”) to becoming a public speaker. The fears which kept me from speaking were not simple to name, much less break. I had to develop a regular practice of reading devotional books, praying and keeping a journal. Three f/Friends met with me faithfully and were patient with my faltering attempts to articulate even basic ideas. As I attempted to give talks to my Meeting about what I was learning, I found it essential to write out every word and had to be constantly told to “speak up.” Through all this, I had to learn, then keep asking myself the various questions Friends have traditionally used for discernment.

Being attuned to the Spirit also allows a different response to the wounds we inflict and receive throughout our lives. I have never been able to avoid periodically hurting the people most close to me, not to mention strangers, whether through inattentiveness, preoccupation with other things, or any of a million other reasons. When I am paying attention to the Inward Monitor I am less apt to do such harm. When I am focused on my own needs, and do harm, attention to the Light makes me more aware and prompts me to make amends. I don’t always respond, but the potential to do less damage is there.

Similarly, when I am listening to the Inward Guide, I am less apt to take offense when others inadvertently hurt me. This entire process seems akin to what the Buddhists call “non-attachment” – not holding on to my own sense of being the center of the universe so I might be more present to others in a less self-interested way. Being changed and healed in the process is ongoing and I expect it to take the rest of my life or longer. Being actively engaged in this transformation is knowing Life.

We can become practiced at recognizing the quirks of our own inner life and learn to sort what is destructive from the movement of grace in the soul, although Penington warned us how “the enemy kindles a great distress in the mind, by stirring up an earnest desire, and a sense of seeming necessity to know.” I know this habit of over-reliance on the rational and its accompanying desire to control everything I possibly can. But oh, how this can lead me off base when not tempered. Penington’s advice after warning about letting rationality run rampant was to suggest “But what if it be better for thee at present to be darkened about these things, than as yet to know?”

The thought of remaining in limbo and not satisfying my mind’s urge to know is disconcerting. Years of practice at discernment better allow my mind to rest uneasily in the place of unknowing. I find I must often attempt to stand in a place of not knowing what comes next when only the next small action is visible. And I know that my heart has a deep desire to know the contours of the universe, a desire which led me to God. In such ways following the motion of the Spirit may cause us to stand in a place of paradox.

Queries for readers
What triggers distress within you? Are you someone, like Isaac Penington, who worries when your heart is at odds with what your rational mind tells you and thus constantly prone to doubts, or is there something else which causes you to ignore the promptings of the Spirit?

When have you ignored the sense that you have acted in a hurtful way and tried to blame it on someone else? What made you do this? What was the result? What steps did you take to right the situation?

Margery Abbott is a member of Multnomah Friends Meeting in Portland, Oregon. To Be Broken and Tender is now available in under the “books” section of this website.

by Kate Jaramillo

Every so often in life, says Catholic theologian Doris Donnelly, we are beckoned to “make an outward journey which responds to our interior quest toward the center we lose in the clutter of everyday living.” There’s something about my turning fifty that made me want- no, need to be- as Thomas Merton said in his Asian journal, “jerked clean out of the habitual.” In my work as a hospital chaplain and living in an urban setting with all that that brings, my life has plenty of clutter. I discerned, from searching the countless websites I had surfed to find the right vacation, that “vacation” was not what I was searching for. This time, I knew I needed something deeper than that, something different. I needed something to get involved in and connected with.

A classified ad in the back of a Quaker magazine offered a trip that was part service and part educational tour of Quaker community development projects in the Bolivian Altiplano countryside. Quakers? Service? Community? That’s different. I don’t know why I decided to go there. I had no particular interest in the country or the continent, for that matter. I hadn’t traveled internationally since my college years, nor could I with certainty pick out Bolivia on a map. Is that it or is it Paraguay? Columbia maybe?

If the tourist experience was not what I was embarking upon, what was it? There seems to be a need in the human person to reach within for an interior wholeness by activating one’s feet and heart and sometimes renewing one’s passport. When that happens, we become pilgrims. The journey we embark upon becomes a pilgrimage. On my trip to Bolivia I was a pilgrim, a woman en route to a destination, moving toward a particular end. I was not a tourist.

What is the difference between a vacation -even one with the lofty goals of service and education- and pilgrimage? Doris Donnelly delineates five distinctions between pilgrims and tourists: 1) pilgrims perceive an internal dimension to themselves, while tourists are focused on the external journey; 2) pilgrims invest themselves, while tourists avoid personal involvement; 3) pilgrims focus on being affected by the pilgrimage, while tourists seek to be unaffected or untouched by their experience; 4) the journey to the destination, the arrival and the return are important to the pilgrim, while arrival at the destination is important to the tourist; and 5) community is formed for the pilgrim, while this is not considered necessary or desired by the tourist.

Valuing the Internal

There are several ways to interpret pilgrimage, and three of those ideas are useful here. There is the literal pilgrimage, involving a physical journey to a significant place, for example, the birthplace of Jesus or where George Fox “saw a great people.” A second kind of pilgrimage is allegorical, viewing life as a temporary abode through which one must travel to reach an everlasting home at the end of life. A third way to view pilgrimage is to imbue it with spiritual meaning. The physical outer experience plays second fiddle to the internal spiritual meaning. Depth is the goal, not distance. It’s not the distance traveled that is important, or even the significance of the destination, but the depth of the experience that is transformative. The transformation sought by the pilgrim is away from incompleteness and fragmentation to a sense of wholeness, a complete human being that is open unto God. Therefore, a pilgrimage is simply a lived experience that helps us become more fully alive human beings. Pilgrims pay attention to this internal realm.

Most people wouldn’t consider removing trees, digging a trench, and other labor the stuff of a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, but for us nine sojourners, it was a meaningful experience. We spent a week in the small town of Sorata working at a student residence, called the Internado, that enables students from outlying communities to attend high school by giving them safe, supervised, affordable housing during the school year. The recently purchased building was in need of repairs and sprucing up. Poor drainage was threatening one of the buildings, so we dug a 32-foot trench for a French drain. The old stucco that faced the interior patio was moldy and in need of fresh paint, so we scrubbed and scrubbed the walls with wirebrushes and bleach before we sealed and painted them a cheery buttercup yellow.

We started work after breakfast and worked alongside the Internado kids when they got “home” from school. We learned just how much work you can do with a pickaxe and machete, and how to make do with the tools that you have when there isn’t a Lowe’s or Home Depot nearby. Pickaxe handles can be made with the branches cut down the day before, and can also be fashioned into sturdy ladders.

Valuing Self-Investment

To be a pilgrim means risking one’s identity. It is risky, after all, to surrender the comfortable clutter of one’s life so that God can be at the center. What is so risky about that? The pilgrim risks change, being transformed, and that personal investment is uncompromising. In the Christian tradition, the “way of the cross,” Jesus’ carrying the cross upon which he would be crucified to the place of his execution, is a metaphor for the Christian way of life and, in this specific sense, Christian pilgrimage as well. On this way of the cross, pilgrims hold on and let go over and over again. By investing themselves, they divest their preconceived notions. Pilgrims are not, therefore, mere observers as the tourist. They are participants, stepping into the photograph, getting involved and risking being changed.

A member of our group was a physician who had the experience of holding clinics in other parts of Latin America under less than ideal circumstances. The Internado was no exception. Patients from far villages waited in the hot sun on the patio to be seen in the “examination room,” which doubled as a computer lab for the students and a bedroom. In some cases, we needed translation from Aymara, the first language of people in the region, to Spanish, then to English. A glitch at customs necessitated a later delivery of medications prescribed at the clinic. The teens, who all had recent classroom experience with Spanish, did the intake work.

I participated by learning how to read blood pressure. It was my first time giving any “hands on” medical care. I was surprised by three characteristics of the people. First, most patients were women over forty with chronic pain being the predominant presenting issue. Lifetimes of backbreaking work, their role being to carry– children, crop yields, material goods –all on their backs, lead to damaged and inflamed spines and joints. Many had unresolved issues from old injuries that were never properly treated. Second, there was almost no obesity and most people were in surprisingly good physical fitness, regardless of age or gender. I never knew that people could have blood pressure so low and still be healthy. No one, even those in their 70’s, had blood pressure above 120/80. Their lifestyle includes modest diets, farming steep slopes at high altitude with no assistance from machines and very little from animals. To get from one place to another, they walk.

Valuing Transformation

The whole purpose of a pilgrim’s efforts, the goal of the journey, is precisely to be affected, altered, to be touched so deeply that a significant transformation occurs. The pilgrimage affects the total human being. The pilgrim’s equilibrium is thrown off, attesting to the power of place, events and people that imprint upon the pilgrim’s mind, body and spirit.

There is no greater equalizer than illness. I know this intellectually from working as a hospital chaplain and experientially from my experience as a cancer survivor. Illness strikes people regardless of demographic grouping or economic status. My experience with a foodborne virus brought me closer with three of my group mates by melting our divisions as only sickness can. Our driver, an Evangelical Friends pastor, reassured me on my darkest night of nausea and diarrhea, that I am to rely on “Solamente Dios.” The doctor reassured me that with medications, time and bowel rest that, “This, too, shall pass.” My brother in bowel distress reassured me that something as miniscule as a virus can fell the young and the strong, as well as the middle-aged and flabby, and that there is no weakness in moaning.

During those three days of illness, I was totally dependent on the kindness of strangers. I had to muster strength and courage just to stay with the group’s itinerary, partaking of some activities, missing others. Taking care of those who were sick brought the group together, reminding us of our common humanity, vulnerability and mutual dependence. The experience taught me, again, the value of being helpless, weak and totally dependent upon our fellow travelers and God.

Valuing the Journey Itself

The journey to the destination and back is just as important as the destination itself. Pilgrims see the journey as a rite of passage and a state of transition between where they were and where they are going. In the Christian New Testament, the story of the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-33) illustrates the importance of the journey in Christian spiritual practice. It’s in the process of the journey on the Emmaus Road that Jesus’ identity is revealed to his disciples. Even though the disciples don’t recognize Jesus as Christ, they love him as a pilgrim and offer him hospitality. The journey itself is an important aspect of pilgrimage, for it is an occasion for growth in love and recognition of the stranger as Christ in disguise. In the generous offer of hospitality and in the receiving of it, the pilgrims become beloved, familiar and known, where once they were invisible strangers.

When we were not working, we took time to visit several community development projects funded by Quaker Bolivia Link. We visited two water projects, including the dedication celebration at one in Huarina Choro where we were fed a wonderful meal of chicken, corn and a variety of potatoes and other tubers. In the village of Pallca Pampa, a predominately Quaker community six miles from Sorata, we were told of the many development projects that improved their way of life. An irrigation project enabled them to grow more than one crop per year. Another water project added potable water, latrines with showers and flush toilets, a communal laundry tub and major crop improvements. Another project added beehives, providing another source of marketable income for the community. These Quakers have taken the initiative to improve their community. The Internado itself is also a result of their initiative and dedication to education of their youth. Coming from a tradition of Friends that has difficulty organizing and providing for the smallest of tasks, I found this particularly inspiring. In La Paz, recipients of Bolivia Quaker Education Fund scholarships for college gathered with us for and Amarya-style potluck and story-telling about the importance of education in their lives. The San Gregorio Weavers Collective hosted us to a scrumptious meal of roasted chicken and potatoes, and provided us an opportunity to sample their wares of fine alpaca woolens.

Valuing Community

Pilgrims build community, and that bonding is essential to pilgrimage. The community is non-hierarchical, based on voluntary association. Through the shared experience of the journey communitas emerges, a spiritual community that is tied in worship and faith. This tie of communitas strengthens relationships between former strangers and between family members. Community enlarges individual life and cuts across social lines. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Psalm 122, known as the “Pilgrimage Psalm,” informs us that pilgrimage builds community and establishes solidarity with the oppressed. Jerusalem, the destination of pilgrimage in the Psalm, is the place in which the 12 Tribes of Israel are gathered. It is also a place where God’s order for the universe is established, fair dealing is done, the weak are protected and the underprivileged can receive impartial justice. The goal of the pilgrim is to enter into community with that kind of world-view. Pilgrims are not autonomous, independent, individualists. The pilgrimage imbues the pilgrim with a sense of solidarity, connectedness and community.

Our pilgrimage was a family affair. A grandmother, grandson, and his buddy, two mother/daughter teams and, a same-sex couple rounded out our little Quaker service trip group. We came from the West Coast and the East Coast and included active Friends and non-Quakers. The three teens were veterans of previous service trips to Mexico and El Salvador. After a day of digging and painting, they still had energy for a couple of hours of soccer with the Internado kids after dinner. At 73, a Friend from Philadelphia led the painting crew in scrubbing and painting. Her daughter, a yoga teacher, helped us work out the kinks after a hard day. Our 75-year-old leader was always the first up the trail to the villages we visited past the end of the road. Our doctor, when not leading clinics, was helping us avoid the turista sickness, and when we could not, treat it.

We are interconnected. We share the road. Pilgrimage, like meeting for worship, is a corporate event. We are not in it alone, for our own edification. Human beings need support, encouragement, and relationships or they perish. Our community is our companions on the road, those who offer us hospitality along the way, and those who wait for us back home. The journey toward wholeness is away from isolation and individualism, amid the perils of the world and through all forms of darkness, toward the Light of God.
Kate Jaramillo is a member of Bridge City Friends Meeting. To learn more about an upcoming Quaker service/study trip, visit http://treasuresoftheandes.com. To learn more about Quaker Bolivia Link, visit http://www.qbl.org/. To learn more about Bolivian Quaker Education Fund, visit, http://bqef.org.

February 2010 Issue
By Jill Hoyenga

When my term as Presiding Clerk had ended, I expected a quiet retirement for a few years until I had recharged by spiritual batteries and then planned to dive back into committee work. However, the incoming Presiding Clerk had attended a workshop on non-profit organization governance and brought back some ideas on changes in our financial reporting to Meeting for Worship for Business. She came to me with a sparkle in her eye and asked if I would clerk a committee to season these ideas. As often happens with leadings, I said “Yes,” without knowing quite what I was getting into. It will be four years in February 2010 since Eugene Friends Meeting in Eugene, Oregon, formed our first Finance Committee.

Our membership roles record about 110 members. Each First Day twelve to twenty persons attend early morning worship; 25–50 persons attend adult and children’s meeting at eleven o’clock worship. We own our Meetinghouse without a mortgage. About eight years ago we began hiring part time employees and now employ three part-time employees, paying for bookkeeping services. Our fiscal year begins July 1 and ends June 30 each year. We do not have an endowment but are just beginning to explore establishing one. These bare facts may explain why our Meeting, established in the late 1940’s, only recently formed a Finance Committee.

Invitation, enlightenment, intention: These are three basic elements of any spiritual endeavor. Why should these elements be any different when we use the language of numbers? When we speak of financial matters we often use the language of religion. Financial reporters write about “faith” in the market. Goods are said to have market “value”. Commercialism may have tried to make money into a religion, but religion isn’t Spirit.

Just as we can re-infuse our religious community with Spirit, we may re-infuse our financial connections with Spirit. “The Market” was once a marketplace, a barter exchange of spirit-led labor and handiwork. Today’s monetized society has distanced us from this marketplace of origin. The fruit of our spirit-led labor is now expressed in the language of numbers that we commonly call money.

We cannot go back to the barter exchange for all that we need to sustain ourselves and the Meeting. But we can examine our financial condition through a worship sharing clearness process. This allows us to be guided by the Light as we consider intentional budgeting and spending.

Grounded in Spirit
Finances tend to be task and number oriented. As such, it can be easy to fall into worldly facilitation and reporting habits, since finances are rarely considered to be a spirit-led activity. The Finance Committee of Eugene Friends Meeting operates essentially as a Worship Group focused on Meeting finances. Our financial policies and procedures are framed as advices and queries to enhance our intention that our deliberations be led by the Spirit.

For many members of the Finance Committee, the more we have explored the spiritual wellspring of the financial life of the Meeting, the deeper our spiritual connection to the Meeting community has become. It is helpful for members to prepare for committee meetings by worshiping deeply. On First Days, our Meeting provides a three hour block of time available for Meeting for Worship, and on occasion, some members have used all three hours to prepare for a committee meeting. Several times a message from Meeting for Worship has become the spiritual touchstone for Meeting financial deliberations.

The Importance of Plain Speaking
The members and attenders most likely to volunteer to serve on the Finance Committee are often those who are fluent in what I call “Financese”. Financese is a specific dialect of the language of numbers that can be very intimidating to people who are not comfortable with numbers. When these well-intentioned volunteers bring a financial report to the membership it is sometimes received as if it were delivered in Japanese (when no-one in the room speaks Japanese.) At best, the report is received with glazed eyes and sympathetic nods. At worst, the financial reporter is asked several questions that make it clear that the listener does not understand the report.

Those attending Meeting for Worship for Business are the equivalent of the Board of Directors of a Friends Meeting. Attenders may have a wide range of experience with or even interest in financial matters. This range, along with changes in attendance from month to month, can make it challenging for a Finance Committee to successfully convey information to the Meeting. Therefore when reporting the financial condition of the Meeting, a key task for our Finance Committee is to translate fairly intimidating QuickBooks reports to what could be called a modern form of plain speech. We have also come to rely on “plain pictures” for presenting certain types of financial information. At our Business Meetings, as a general rule, all information is available as a resource for questions and archived for later questions, but only a text summary of those reports is presented to the membership.

Creating Clear Reports
The initial need for the Finance Committee was to clarify financial reporting to the membership. Once the Committee was formed, other financial tasks were added to the scope: supervise a paid Treasurer; educate the membership about financial matters (this expands the scope of financial reporting); prepare the annual budget; and long term financial planning. Finance Committee members also serve on other committees in an advisory capacity, such as Personnel Committee. We have six members on our committee and need every single one!

Statements of cash flow—income and expenditures for a given period—are the easiest financial reports for most members of the Meeting to comprehend. Income statements, statements of retained earnings, and balance sheets are virtually incomprehensible to people who have not been educated in the finer points of accounting. Though these reports are often provided by bookkeepers, these business-oriented reports may not at first feel relevant to the financial condition of a small to mid-size Meeting. However, these reports are designed to provide specific information that may be important to understanding the context of cash flows of the Meeting. Our Finance Committee has focused on reporting cash flows.

Diversity on the Finance Committee is very helpful for seasoning of spreadsheet reports and for the task of translating into a text report. Though each committee member is not considered to be representing a constituency, the diversity of our committee reflects the diversity of our membership. As Finance Committee membership has changed these last years we have been blessed with perspectives ranging from a Friend who is very comfortable with numbers and has an eye for detail developed over years of correcting math homework and tests but knows very little about financial reporting conventions, to another who is an investment consultant, and even someone new to the Meeting that does not yet speak fluent “Quakerese”, who helps to ensure that our cliquish terms are removed or explained sufficiently.

Bringing these diverse views together in worship sharing centered on financial reports has resulted in creating quarterly reporting templates that are clear and concise. Admittedly our early efforts were challenging. I remember our committee’s second or third try at creating a quarterly report text summary. I was very discouraged and commented to our Presiding Clerk after Meeting for Worship for Business that even I didn’t understand what I had just said. The Clerk very gently encouraged our committee to keep trying and we would get it. Later that year, after much worship sharing to draft quarterly reports, at the rise of Business Meeting several attenders stopped me to express appreciation and some said that it was the first time they had understood a financial report to the membership. I received a few cards in the mail thanking our Finance Committee for our good work. Even these two years later, attenders remain very appreciative of our Spirit-led text reporting approach.

Financial Reporting
Several levels of financial reporting are helpful for keeping Friends informed about the financial condition of the Meeting. Budgeting, quarterly reports, special reports, and an annual report on finances are all useful tools, and ones which can be readily adapted to be Spirit-led, concise, and enjoyable to read.

Budgeting: The springboard of our spirit-led financial life is the budget process. Each cycle our Finance Committee focuses the spiritual lens on our budget through advices and queries that speak to the financial condition of the Meeting. Budgeting using advices and queries as a touchstone invites those present to enter into worship during deliberations. They allow the Presiding Clerk to refocus discussion by invoking the queries. They frame the conversation such that when the budget is approved there can be a feeling of spiritual fulfillment. These past few years are certainly the first times I have felt spiritually uplifted at the end of the budget process rather than just relieved.

Quarterly Reporting: Once the budget is approved, quarterly reports to the membership provide financial cash flow reports. The template we have developed follows this general pattern:
1) The first section reminds members and attenders of the time frame described in the report.
2) A summary of net cash flow for the quarter is followed by a bar graph comparing the quarter income, expenditures and the annual budgeted amount. The summary concludes with a reminder: “The Meeting’s commitment to the operations, maintenance and ministry reflected in this year’s budget remains dependent upon the continued financial commitment of our members and attenders.”
3) The third section is reserved for Committee comments or recommendations, an opportunity for educating the membership.
4) The first part of the second page is devoted to annual budget income and expenditure detail. It is particularly helpful to list quarterly net and total the net to date as the budget year progresses.
5) The second part of the second page outlines the income and expenditures in our unbudgeted accounts, called “Dedicated Funds”.
6) The entire report concludes with a total cash flow statement to date. Sample_4Q_Report

Special reports: Special reports are purpose driven. They usually focus on a specific aspect of the whole financial picture. Occasionally a Finance Committee member is approached to answer a question that merits special reporting. Sometimes questions during committee seasoning of financial reports prompt development of a special report. Typically pictures are worth a thousand words in a special report. Examples of special reports include a pie chart of types of income or a bar graph comparing first quarter income for the last three years. It is our practice to make each special report available to all members and attenders. A special report may eventually be incorporated into other reports.

Annual Report: Many non-profit organizations publish annual reports that not only fulfill their responsibility to reporting financial conditions, but include testimonials of how the donated money was spent. Eugene Friend Meeting Finance Committee has successfully implemented this style of annual reporting. The report is intended to create a dialog regarding the financial life of the Meeting.
We publish the annual report as an insert to the newsletter the month in which the budgeting cycle begins. It provides a wider financial context and foundation for the budget meditation. The annual report was especially helpful in educating members and attenders as it became clearer that our spending trends were exceeding our income. The Finance Committee felt that people who know about the operations, maintenance and ministry carried out by the Meeting are more likely to feel good about donating their hard-earned dollars. Sample_Annual_Report

Postcard Reporting

It is common for a fraction of the general Meeting membership to attend Monthly Meeting for Worship for Business, and our Meeting is no different. We typically host 30 to 70 people for worship each First Day and 20 or so people attend Business Meeting each month. Finance Committee felt it was important to reach out to the wider membership, particularly as it became clear that our expenditures were trending to exceed our income for the fourth year in a row. Our committee developed a “postcard” financial report to the membership that is given out at the rise of Meeting. (Sample_Postcard_Report)

The purpose of our first postcard report was to alert the Meeting of spending trends and to request reduced expenditures from committees, a 20% increase in monthly giving from members and attenders, and for Friends to consider a one-time donation. Our Meeting members and attenders responded quickly to this postcard alert, and we ended the budget year with our income slightly exceeding expenditures. The committee members felt that we should continue the practice of postcard reports.

“Hiding in Plain Sight”
Friends value transparency in all of our endeavors. To fulfill the expectation of full disclosure, well-meaning treasurers present the bookkeeping reports at Business Meeting. As the bookkeeping reports have become more complex, especially after the transition to QuickBooks reports, in many Meetings presenting unseasoned reports has amounted to “hiding in plain sight”. In Eugene Friends Meeting, attempting to season QuickBooks reports in Business Meeting became increasingly frustrating to those in attendance.

It may seem counter-intuitive that greater transparency in financial reporting resulted from sending the QuickBooks reports to a committee for thorough seasoning and then publishing a text summary for the membership. However, this new reporting style allows the community we serve to begin the conversation feeling that they have information they can understand.
This principle of transparency and of Spirit-guided financial consideration has transformed Eugene Friends’ Meeting into a community which is able to greet money issues in our community with clarity and openness–with a sense of invitation, enlightenment and intention.

Jill is a convinced Friend of 23 years who is a member of Eugene Friends Meeting in Oregon. She has been the clerk of her Meeting’s Finance Committee since its inception in February 2006. This committee has been the catalyst for Spirit-led Meeting-wide financial explorations.

What began as a family project in the fall of 2003 as a response to the invasion of Iraq has become a leading with its own life. “At the time we started, there were 637 deaths, and they weren’t allowing images of coffins in the media. We wanted to make that number visible,” said Vickie. She and Tim Reed and daughter Jenny Stuart began making cranes, and crafted the first eleven panels of cranes, which they displayed at local peace vigils. Since then, everyone from IMYM’s children’s program to community members in Las Cruces has worked to make cranes for the memorial. It now contains 110 panels with over 4,000 cranes. When it is set up, it extends for nearly 100 yards, the length of a football field. It has been displayed in Las Cruces, in Silver City, in Albuquerque and Santa Fe—and in our nation’s capital.

In the winter of 2008, I mentioned to Mary Burton Riseley of Gila Friends Meeting in Silver City that I would like to take the Iraq Peace Crane Memorial to Washington DC. Mary said, “Great! We can take my truck.” In the spring, we telephoned the National Park Service, which operates the monuments in Washington, DC. They sent us a permit to display the Memorial for three days over the Memorial Day weekend at the base of the Washington Memorial on a grassy plot at the corner of 14th Street and Constitution Avenue. This permit was free, as we were not selling anything and qualified for First Amendment protections.

We did not believe it would happen until we pulled out of the driveway on May 19th. Tim figured out a way to support panels in cross-shaped groups, since the National Mall does not allow stakes to be put in the ground and Jenny (my daughter) came to help and took digital photos. Friends from Quaker Meetings and the peace community in our region sent money to pay our expenses. So many people supported us that we have money left over to buy more panels and take the memorial to new cities in our region.

It took us four days to drive to DC, and four days back. (We traveled in a 1994 Toyota pickup with the odometer reading 301,100 plus miles when we left New Mexico. Prayers were welcomed!) We had friends and family who gave us hospitality en route and in Washington.

I had never been to DC and as we drove in with Mary pointing out famous sites. We kept seeing the many homeless people, with their shopping carts and plastic bags.
Thousands of people travel to Washington for Memorial Day, and hundreds stopped by our display. On the first day we asked people many questions. “How are you related to the person you’re looking for? Have you been to Iraq? What do you think we should do now?” To the last, we heard interesting responses, and not one person supported staying in Iraq. One Army guy said, “We’re training the Iraqi police and I don’t see any reason we need to stay over there.”

Day Two
The second day, the day of “Rolling Thunder”, over 20,000 Vietnam veterans on their motorcycles roared along a route from the Pentagon to the Vietnam Memorial and then right past us for six hours. We asked fewer questions.

The memorial creates its own space, its own energy. I keep learning this each time I sit with it. This time I was impressed by the juxtaposition of the peace crane symbol and the pictures of the soldiers. On Memorial Day, the past deaths of soldiers are often used to justify current and future wars. It seemed to me that we presented an alternative, the possibility of remembering and honoring these mostly young people who have died in an unjust war as a way of expressing our wish for peace.

By Monday, we just felt like listening if the person we’d helped find someone wanted to talk. Most did not. So we just stood by them for a short time, and then left them to their own thoughts.

Mary said, “I began to feel that by questioning them I might be using them to satisfy my curiosity or to have interesting experiences to report when we got home. I gradually became more sensitive to my own grief and to theirs. Each day I cried more. By that last day, I felt that my generic grief for the 4037 lives lost in the Iraq War was joined to their deeper and more specific grief and I didn’t want to talk, either.”

It was a unique experience to set up on Memorial Day weekend. We met many vets, Girl Scouts passing out angel pins, a sympathetic woman from the Defense Department, a Japanese journalist, young women from England who videotaped us, a Washington blogger, motorcyclists and motorcyclists and motorcyclists, people from all over the world and the Scientologists who set up next to us and helped us set up and take down each day.

On the way home, driving through rain in Virginia and Eastern Tennessee, and white sky humidity in Western Tennessee and Arkansas, we listened to “Field Notes on a Catastrophe” by Elizabeth Kolbert, a fascinating account of the evidence supporting the human role in global climate change. I was driving and I said to Mary, “This makes me feel like we should pull over and park the truck and never drive again.”

Was it worth it, driving 3,984 miles to DC and back to New Mexico?
We feel it was. We bought carbon offsets, calculated for us by the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, a non-profit which buys solar and wind power generation. (The cost for the 3011 pounds of carbon we produced by our round trip at 25 miles per gallon was $40.)

Most of the people we met were tied in some way to the military. These are the people who make an effort to go to Washington for Memorial Day. It felt very good to serve wives and fiances, friends, brothers and sisters of those who have died in Iraq, to provide them with the only marker of the Iraq War in DC this year, an impressive visual record of those 4037 lives lost so far.

We reached across an ideological divide in a way that most peace actions really don’t. We left those who stopped by with a different idea about peace activists than the one we leave when we’re marching or vigiling for an end to the war. We both wore FCNL “War is Not the Answer” blue and white buttons, but we did not proselytize, and hopefully we were able to embody an anti-war sentiment that clearly cares deeply about the people who volunteer to fight in war, and for the grief of their loved ones.
May the gifts of the Earth touch our hearts.
May we be filled with kindness for ourselves,
for our planet, and all beings.
May we have the courage to change.

Since our trip and the publicity we have received locally, we have been invited by veterans groups to set up the memorial on Veteran’s Day. We live in an area with lots of military installations and lots of veterans. How do we as Friends talk and discuss the issues of war and peace with our neighbors? How do we move away from polarization to communication? The strong vision I am left with after DC is that this memorial is one of hope, it gives an option to those in the military—yes, mourn and honor the lives that have been lost, but change directions and work not for more wars but for peace. I believe it will be the soldiers and their families, not us peace activists, that will lead us in demilitarizing and creating new priorities for our country.

———-
Vickie’s journal entry May 26, 2008
Memorial Day

I woke up with thoughts about the Peace Crane Memorial. We have set it up on the Mall for two days.
Some people are able to see it, others not, they walk past or right through. Children come right in and begin to read names. Where we have it set up, from far away it looks really huge, but from up close it is smaller.
It is a spiritual journey, as a Friend said. I see it now as a ‘listening project’. I wonder if we could listen away a war. I think I am getting better at listening to the vets and their families but I do not know how to listen to the angry Quakers or ‘peace’ activists. I do not believe we can stop the war machine with anger. I think all nonviolent movements need to get beyond the anger of those harmed, to compassion.
The way of war continues as we accept structures or see relationships and agreements as structures. The poverty here is amazing, homelessness and overt richness. We accept this relationship and use the military to defend it. The use and abuse of the soldier and the veteran is amazing.
So much comes down to listening and it is such a challenge for me. One woman came up to me and said she had walked into the Memorial and the first name she saw was from her home town. It kind of freaked her out. People have asked if we had something, an info sheet, a hand out a web site. I think it is better that we do not. What we have is the experience, the feelings they have at seeing the memorial.
——-
Vickie Aldrich is a member of Las Cruces Monthly Meeting in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Mary Burton Riseley is a member of Gila Friends Meeting in Silver City, New Mexico. Friends interested in learning more about the Iraq Peace Crane Memorial can contact Vickie at mathstar (at) zianet (dot) com.
The prayer included in this story is reprinted from raventalk.com.

November 2009 Issue

When I left my position as editor of Friends Bulletin in July 2008, my wife Kathleen and I had wonderful plans. I had a scholarship to go to Pendle Hill so I could finish my book about Howard and Anna Brinton, and Kathleen was given a sabbatical leave from the Methodist Church so she could study spiritual direction. We sold our house with remarkable speed (and at a good price!) and made arrangements to spend the summer visiting Friends and family and camping. But God had other plans for us.
That same July we learned that Kathleen had lymphoma—a form of cancer that killed her mother twenty years ago when she was Kathleen’s age (56). This was devastating news, but the oncologists were hopeful. Cancer research has made great strides in the past couple of decades, and Kathleen’s oncologist was convinced that her cancer could be knocked out with chemo in six months.

This was the beginning of an amazing spiritual journey. Because Kathleen was a Methodist pastor, and I have been a public Friend for many years, we decided to use this crisis as an opportunity to explore spiritual healing and to witness to our faith. We kept a daily blog in which we recorded our spiritual insights as well  as the progress of our cancer. I use the word “our” cancer because we were facing this challenge together. You can still read our blog at CaringBridge.org (kathleenross). Many found our daily entries helpful, and even inspiring.
Soon after her diagnosis, Kathleen recalled a phrase from the writings of the Quaker peace activist Gene Hoffman: “Live your life as if everything that happens is something you prayed for.” Under the circumstances, this seemed a hard saying. Pray for cancer? Never! But as we went through our cancer journey, we realized the deep truth behind this saying. No one would pray for cancer, but we would pray to be closer to God, to each other, and to our family and friends. Having cancer can help us to reach our deepest spiritual goals, as we learned the hard way.
Kathleen’s cancer shrank significantly after initial treatments, but some bits stubbornly resisted various forms of chemo, so after six months, the doctors recommended a more drastic approach: a bone marrow transplant. This involves harvesting stem cells from a donor and giving the patient a massive dose of chemo to destroy any lingering cancer cells (as well as the patient’s immune system.) The patient is then infused with the stem cells which migrate to the bone marrow and miraculously recreate the immune system.
This, in any case, is how a bone marrow transplant is supposed to work. We were told that there was a 50% cure rate, and a 10-20% risk of mortality. Since there was a 90% risk of mortality without a BMT, we felt the odds were pretty good, especially since Kathleen was relatively young and had responded well to chemo up to that point.
On April 28, 2009, Kathleen was admitted into the City of Hope, one of the premier cancer hospitals in the United States. She was given her transplant several days later. Within a week she had a severe reaction—her lungs began bleeding—and she was taken to ICU.  The doctors did everything humanly possible to save her. Her prayer network was activated, and people from various faith traditions—Methodists, Quakers, Jews, Muslims, Bahais, and Buddhists—began praying for her night and day.
Ten days later it became clear that Kathleen’s condition could not be reversed, so in keeping with her written wishes, and those of her family, I let the doctors remove her from life support. A few minutes later, on Sunday, May 24, she drew her last breath.
It was a devastating experience, the most painful of my life. But it was also a time of joy. I felt incredibly grateful for the outpouring of love that I received from Friends, from the Methodists, and from the interfaith community. In the midst of unbearable grief and floods of tears, I felt surrounded and uplifted by Divine Love too deep for words.
Hundreds of people came to memorial meetings that took place at our Quaker meetinghouse and at a Methodist church. These memorials were an opportunity for people of various faith traditions to express their appreciation for Kathleen and all that was precious to her.

Lessons Learned
I have learned many lessons from this experience, but I want to share just a few here.
Many married couples who have expressed admiration for how Kathleen and I behaved during our cancer journey. Yet everyone who marries, and is faithful, will probably undergo something similar to what we experienced. When you marry, you make a vow to love someone “in sickness and health, till death do us part.” Sooner or later, a married couple will have to decide whether or not to keep that vow. Not everyone does. Some decide to divorce their spouse, or have an affair, or act in other ways that seem to me deplorable.
But if a couple decides to be faithful to that vow, they will have an opportunity to deepen your their love in ways beyond imagining. I enjoyed twenty wonderful years of marriage, and in many ways the last year was the best. When my wife had beautiful long hair, it was easy to love her. When she became bald and had a tube sticking out of her chest, it was still easy to love her. As Shakespeare says, “Love does not alter when it alteration finds.” Despite, or perhaps because of our adversities, our love grew stronger. We drew closer to each other, as well as to our family and friends and to God.
I also learned that our Quaker testimony on community takes on new meaning and importance during a life-threatening illness. It takes a whole community to bring healing and hope to those facing a health crisis or the loss of a loved one. I can’t imagine how anyone could endure such experiences alone, or without some kind of religious faith.
Our spiritual community can also become our spiritual family. From the very beginning, my meeting set up a care committee to meet with Kathleen and me. Over the course of our cancer journey, this committee visited us at home as well as in the hospital. These visits included times of worship as well as sharing and were enormously helpful.
We also received phone calls, cards, and emails that cheered us up and reminded us that we were not alone. Our CaringBridge blog became a way to stay connected with our friends and family on a daily basis.
We took part in a cancer support group at the Wellness Community and become part of the wider cancer community by going to conferences and other events geared towards cancer patients. I came to know in a new way people–some of them old friends–who had survived cancer and had life-changing experiences.

The Journey Continues
During this past year, my heart has opened up in new ways to people who are struggling with health issues. I started taking elderly people to the hospital, and listening with more care and attention when people told me of their bouts with sickness.
Little by little I came to understand what “pastoral care” means. Quakers do not have paid pastors, but we nonetheless need to provide pastoral care for each other as we go through life’s challenges. It is helpful to be trained for this role—and many Friends who give pastoral care have been trained as psychologists or social workers. But sometimes experience is the best teacher.
For most of my life as a Friend, I have seen myself primarily as a peace activist. But during the past year, and especially now that my wife has passed on, now I also see myself also as a kind of pastor. A pastor is someone who listens compassionately, who cares deeply, and is present for those going through difficult times. This is what I now feel called to do. It is something that I feel many Friends could also do, if we helped them to discern this gift and to develop it.
I learned the value of being a kind of pastor this summer at Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Annual Session.  Last year I had to miss PYM for the first time in twenty years because of our cancer diagnosis. When I showed up at Walker Creek Ranch, I was warmly welcomed by Friends, many of whom knew my story and were surprised and pleased to see me. Throughout the week I felt an outpouring of love and support from many Friends and am grateful to have PYM as my spiritual family.
I became a magnet for Friends who have had close encounters with mortality. I felt as if I had entered a new community, the society of “those who grieve” and are seeking to be blessed and comforted.
One Friend tearfully told me how her baby died several hours after birth, and what a devastating experience this had been for her spiritually and emotionally. A woman shared how her husband died of cancer six months after their wedding, and how painful it was to lose someone during the honeymoon period of their relationship. Another woman told of how agonizing it was to lose her husband after 30 thirty years of marriage and how this loss utterly transformed her life. A gay man told me of the pain he felt when his lover died in 1985—a time when the AIDSs epidemic in San Francisco killed thousands of people—including nearly 300 friends of his friends who died within a couple of years during this time of plague. A mother wept fresh tears recalling the death of her seven-year daughter four years ago due to leukemia. A woman in her fifties confessed that her boyfriend died in a boating accident thirty years ago when she was a college student and she suspected he may have committed suicide.
As people shared their sorrows, and as I listened as compassionately as I could, I realized how much grief people carry and how much they yearn for a blessing. Led to do what I could to help, I organized a “bereavement group” which met the last night of Annual Session. Four people showed up and shared their experiences. We ended our precious time of sharing with a period of worship and a song. I also led them in a quick laughter yoga exercise. We parted feeling relieved and light-hearted.
After this encounter, I thought of the phrase used in Handel’s Messiah to describe Jesus: “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” I like the phrase “acquainted with grief.” It implies that somehow we can befriend our grief and become intimate with these painful feelings. By doing so, we can experience a deeper communion and friendship with others.
Being led to be more pastoral does not mean I will no longer work for peace. To the contrary, I have devoted myself full-time to peace activism, even if it means working as a volunteer. I know that Kathleen would approve of this decision, and I feel her spirit encouraging me to deepen my connection with the one who was called the Prince of Peace. I have come to see more clearly than ever before that peacemaking is ultimately about relationship-building, and I hope that my activism will be more loving and compassionate. Just as my mentor and friend Gene Hoffman became a more compassionate peace activist after her marriage failed and she had a nervous breakdown, I hope that what has happened this past year will help me to become a more loving Friend. So much love has been bestowed on me during this time of trial it will take a lifetime, or perhaps many lifetimes, to give back what I have been given.
To all who have been part of this journey, I say, “Thank you and God bless you!”

Anthony Manousos is a member of Santa Monica Friends Meeting and currently resides in Culver City, CA. A Quaker peace activist, writer, and teacher, he serves on the board of directors for several interfaith organizations, including the Parliament of the World’s Religions and Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace. He can be reached at interfaithquaker at aol dot com. His blog is LAquaker.blogspot.com.

John Calvi is a Certified Massage Therapist specializing in trauma and a Quaker healer with a spiritual gift for the release of emotional and physical pain following trauma. Since 1982 he has worked with rape survivors, people with AIDS, inmates, and tortured refugees. He is also the founder and convener of The Quaker Initiative to End Torture, QUIT. John is well-known among Friends in the West, having visited Meetings in Pacific and Intermountain Yearly Meetings and offered workshops on healing at Ben Lomond Quaker Center. This is an edited version of his address to North Pacific Yearly Meeting this year.

So. Experiencing light in hard times: how do we stay faithful in times of trouble?
As someone who taught young children for ten years as a Montessori teacher, sometimes I like to take these larger questions and break them down into smaller questions to help the learning happen. And when I look at this title, which I think is very large, I break it down into two questions: how much are you freaking out? And how large is your anchor?

Times of trouble are known to all of us. There is pain for every person. There is trouble, conflict, difficulty, injustice, known to us as individuals and as groups, and certainly in our witness throughout the world. And so maybe what we’re talking about this morning is that our faith is going to be an aspect of our response to trouble. And when trouble comes, when we experience pain, are we able to keep that connection to the Divine? Are we able to remember our testimonies and our principles as we witness injustice, or maybe as we ourselves are personally offended, or personally endangered?

In some ways this is a very large question, and in other ways it is actually a fairly simple concept. There is a wonderful old Arabic saying, which is, “Pray to God, but tie your camel.” Yes, devotion, but have you done the practical things which are necessary to be in the world? The ways we respond to trouble are as important as the trouble itself. And is there a way that we can be responding to trouble which will maintain our connection to the Divine? Can we do as early Friends suggested, and leave the meetinghouse on first day, but not to leave Meeting for Worship? When trouble comes, can we still be working in the Light?

Creativity in Crisis
How creative can we be, and how much can we work without fear as we enter into crisis, as pain comes into our lives? This becomes a very important question. Can we be creative when trouble comes?

My Great-Aunt Lucy and her friend Ruby came over from Italy. They had some trouble when they came, because in Italy they were farmers, and they had land, and they grew their own food. But when they came to America, they had to live with relatives in the city, where it was crowded and there wasn’t land. But they got some flowerpots, and they planted eggplant, they planted tomatoes, they planted what they could. And at the end of the summer they had three bushels of eggplant. But they didn’t have the heavy crockery they needed to salt and sweat and drain the eggplant. So they took the three bushels to the laundromat, and they put it on a spin/rinse cycle.

When you find yourself in a circumstance where it is not as you hoped and not as you planned, and you still want to go ahead and carry on with your work, your response to the crisis—and your ability to bring Light into it—is going to be very important.

Responding to Pain
When trouble comes into our lives, one of the ways we can understand our response to that trouble is to take a look at our response to pain itself. What is your understanding of pain in your own life, and how have you responded to it at first? Over time, how have you learned to respond to it in ways more helpful to you?

As I have traveled around for the last quarter-century, working with people in trouble, crisis and pain—refugees who have been tortured, the AIDS epidemic, the crisis of rape—I have seen something very clearly. It’s that when we are in trouble and in pain, we have this image of God that’s very much like the one Michelangelo put on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He’s a big white guy in a cloud with a beard, strong—a landlord. But he owns everything. He is very strong and very powerful, and a bit of a grouch. You should not get on his bad side, because he will fry your butt. We beseech this idea of God. “You’re the one who is in charge. I need your help now. Things have gotten really bad down here.”

There is also a very different experience. When we are in a gathered and covered Meeting, it is extremely common that we come to an understanding that the Divine is beyond words. Language is insufficient, and the spiritual experience is so large and so intimate and so intrusive to our lives that it permeates every atom and every molecule—it totally surrounds. The idea of putting the Divine in a human form of one person is really not what we are experiencing. We are experiencing something much larger and grander than that.

It’s common among Friends to have spiritual experiences which teach us the Divine is beyond language and beyond any simple description, and beyond using any simple idea or picture to witness that experience. Now here’s a problem: we have this experience of the Divine over here, and we have this beseeching of the picture over here. These two things don’t match up very well. And they especially don’t match up well when there is a group of people having this spiritual experience over here which is very deep, and the people over here who are in pain and trouble, holding to a picture of what the Divine is.

These two groups have to communicate and work together. This becomes a difficulty. Sometimes it actually becomes a difficulty within the individual. How do I understand the Divine? Is it this as experience over here, where I don’t actually have language, or is it as this experience over here, which is so familiar? This can also set up conflict within and between different groups.
One of the important things for us to remember is that it is a burden to dislike someone. And not only is it a burden, but on those occasions when we enjoy disliking someone, that’s actually pathology. Now, I say this coming from an Italian family, where the tradition of disliking people is very strong. But it is something within all of us. All Quakers recognize this situation: you walk into business meeting, and you see so and so. Your first thought is, “Oh God, they’re still alive. Just goes to show you the limit of prayer.”

There is authority on this idea that it is a burden to dislike someone—Jesus. Speaking in the Sermon on the Mount, towards the end of that beautiful speech, he says, “You’ve been told that if you kill someone, you’re going to Hell. But I’m telling you if you yell at someone, ‘you fool!’ You will go to Hell.”

As an Italian, my first thought is, he’s saying we can’t even get angry at someone. Oh, my God! We’ll have nothing to talk about! We can’t yell? But I think essentially Jesus once again is right. To yell, ‘thou fool!’ at someone, to disrespect someone—it does separate us from the Divine. Even though we know there are people who are worthy of our disrespect and have earned our anger with everything they have done, that act separates us from the Divine.

And sometimes, we can hug someone and say, “When I get angry with you, I miss you.”

So can it be that in all conflict of all sizes, interior to the individual and among nations, that we have to answer the question, “do I still understand that to dislike anyone is a burden?” We need to ask ourselves if this is a burden we need to continue to carry, and if there is a way to lay the burden down.
Sometimes we are truly insulted by someone. I remember my grandmother working their farm with eleven children. A neighbor down the road came by and said, “You know, those Italians, they smell funny because they’re dirty, and they steal things, and they are lazy.” My grandmother picked up the axe and went next door to change his mind. She had to be restrained by my grandfather.

Sometimes the insult is so large that the anger feels absolutely justified and natural, and has to be held and kept. And holding a grudge seems like a good, solid, honest tradition. You’ve heard of Italian dementia, where you forget everything but the grudges?

Sometimes there hasn’t even been a direct insult, but there are qualities about an individual which make it easy to dislike them. We had a person in our meeting who kind of degenerated. She was a social worker, and she had spiritual gifts—she could see the colors around people. She could read those colors and tell you whether or not the trouble you were having was your thinking, or illness in your body. She was also physically and emotionally unwell. When she got off her medication, she would upset people, and as she deteriorated, she became increasingly eccentric. When she needed a ride into town, she’d hang around the ATM, and when you drove up in your car, she’d get in the other door. She’d tell you she didn’t need to go far, and was very friendly, but it scared a lot of folks. For many, she was easy to dislike or disrespect.

The Spiritual Life
There are folks who have been very wounded by Christianity and by churches. I would just remind us that we cannot blame Christianity on Jesus. It was never his intention that there would be millionaire preachers on television saying that God would save them is you sent $700 this year. This is really very separate from the message of Jesus. I would encourage anyone who has been wounded by Christianity to make friends with the teachings of Jesus, because there is useful wisdom there. And for those of who have had a visitation of Jesus, I would ask that you share this passion in a way that other people can understand, because it is a precious experience.

Having a visitation was not something I asked for. But one morning I was in a church basement, working with a woman from El Salvador who had been severely tortured. As she went into prayer and I began my work, Jesus came into the room, and there was no doubt about who is was, how it felt, what it meant, and how beautiful the love. It’s very important for those of us who have that kind of experience to be able to share that in ways which do not bump into the wounds caused by Christianity.

I did have a little bit of fun with this once. My Aunt Rose was a born-again Billy Graham Reagan Republican. And one day when I was visiting with her, her knees were hurting very badly from her arthritis. And I said, “Aunt Rose, if you say your favorite prayer, I’m gonna do a little bit of energy work. Let’s see if we can make this pain less.” Now, Rose was a severe conservative. She thought that the American war in Vietnam was a good idea. But she also had a strong spiritual life. And she had clear direct lines to Headquarters. When she went into prayer, you could feel it. And when she went into prayer, I began to do my energy work, and towards the end her eyes popped open.

There was a little bit of a thing going on between me and Aunt Rose because I was her favorite nephew, but she did not like the idea that her favorite nephew was a homosexual who went and married another man. For God’s sakes! And when her eyes opened up and she said, “My knees don’t hurt anymore. How did you do that?” I said, “Well Rose, when you are a child of God, holding to the Light…”

Our experience of a spiritual life can begin to interfere with the difference between knowing and believing. One of the differences between knowing and believing is whether or not your respect for other people is spiraling upward or spiraling downward. If you are quite sure that you know how Heaven is constructed and who God is and how the Divine works, then every time you listen to someone with a different understanding, chances are your capacity to disrespect them is spiraling in a way that increases that disrespect. Whereas if you have your ideas and you believe how things are constructed in spiritual life, rather than ‘knowing’ it, you may learn something different. You may be open to continuing revelation. In that case, your capacity to listen to another person who thinks differently actually increases.

Understanding Responses to Pain
In terms of being in the Light during troubled times, I want to take a close look at what we understand about pain. What do you understand about the pain in your life? All of us have some pain. Maybe it’s an old pain, maybe it’s a new pain, maybe it’s something that has passed and left an impression. Maybe it’s something that’s happening right now. What it is that you know about your pain and your response to that pain? And how is that different from the people around you? How do those other people respond to trouble in their life?

Think about crying. How is it that you cry? When is it you allow yourself to cry? I find that if I cry about two hours a week, I can keep about even with my grief for the pain of the world, with my grief for the pain within our nation, with my grief for the pain within my own individual life. What are the circumstances under which you allow yourself to cry? And how is that different from the people around you? Some folks need to be alone, some folks need to be with someone else, but that other person can’t really pay attention. Other people need to be with someone, but the need to be held while they’re weeping.

What is it you understand about how you respond to pain? Has that changed? Is that changing now? Does that change with the different kinds of pain you experience?

Something else I would remind us of is that the Light, the Divine, the presence of reverence, is constant—just as sunlight is constant. When there is a cloud or there is nighttime, we understand that the sun is coming back around, and the sun is still shining even if we can’t see it. The Divine, the Light, is the same way. It is there, it is constant. It doesn’t leave, it doesn’t go away. It is we who are interrupted in that connection to the Divine. It is we who lose track of the fact that we ourselves are aspects of the Divine, that we are the breath and the fingers of the Divine.

How is it that we reawaken ourselves to come back, and understand that we are aspects of the Divine? What brings you back to your own greatest wisdom, to your own best capacity to receive spiritual guidance?

One more idea about trouble: the only way that I am able to go and do my work, where I witness so much suffering, is to understand that trouble and pain have a function, and that function is learning. Any kind of trouble or pain we have experienced has parts and pieces of it we can learn from. And it is in the learning that we move pain and suffering into knowledge and wisdom. Whatever pain you have now, somehow, there are ways to understand the parts of that pain so that it is less fierce within you. Somehow, there are some ways to consider it in parts and pieces, not just as a big block with no handles on it. And when there is pain or conflict or trouble where there is no learning going on, the conflict simply remains pain and trouble and conflict.

An old friend of mine used to give thanks for his troubles. His prayer would be, “Thank You, dear Lord, for this pain in my life. I know I didn’t do very well with it today, but I’m sure if you bring it back again tomorrow, I can try again and improve.” I have never been able to sincerely say that myself. I have only gotten to the point of being able to say, “Thank You that it didn’t hurt as much as it could have.”

When I was sixteen and first came to Quakers, I felt so much that I kept coming back. And I began to understand that Quakerism is cumulative. The more you enter into the silence and the stillness, the more that you ask to be washed in the Light, the more that you participate, the more you begin to understand that there is ground opening up beneath you that is larger and deeper than you first imagined. As members of the Religious Society of Friends, as Quakers, we have a duty to come to that place which I think of as a spiritual pinnacle, which is to be in awe of Creation. We are called to that point of stillness and deep-centeredness, whether in Meeting for Worship or in service, where we can look at the most beautiful and the most horrific and be in awe of the creation of all of it, and be astounded, and be grateful. We have an obligation as Quakers to continue to try and reach for this place where we can be in awe of all creation.

Visit John’s website: www.johncalvi.com.

by Brian Vura-Weis

From the beginning of Quakerism there was a tension between the Word given by the Bible and the Word as experienced by the individual. This dynamic has played out over the years between the Mystical, Universal and Christocentric Friends. It has led to difficulties within meetings and caused yearly meetings and families to split based on their conceptions of Truth. In virtually all of these divisions there was almost never disagreement about the existence of God. The first page of Pacific Yearly Meeting’s current Faith and Practice speaks to this:

The religious practices of Friends are founded in direct communion with God and the conviction that the Divine Light is accessible to each person; yet it is one Light, one Truth. We wait with hearts and minds open to the Divine so that Truth will be made known among us.
Our corporate search for God’s word is the heart of the Quaker Meeting for Worship. We believe that God, the Light, the Truth is part of our being. We say “there is that of God in everyone.” Truth is continually revealed to us, often through a gathered mystical experience. We learn to recognize the truth by experience.

So how can anyone call himself/herself a Quaker and not believe in God? God, speaking to us individually or corporately, seems to be the central thesis of Friends, yet many of us find the basic concept of a creator or sustaining God not meaningful to us personally.
At least one early Quaker agreed. David Boulton in his essay Militant Seedbeds of Early Quakerism: Winstanley and Friends, outlines Gerrard Winstanley’s 17th Century Quaker views on God as follows: “God is Reason, or selflessness, or community. Christ is not ‘a man (who) lived and died long ago at Jerusalem’ but ‘the power of the spirit within you’. God is not to be looked for ‘in a place of glory beyond the sun, but within yourself… He that looks for a god outside himself … worships he knows not what, but is … deceived by the imagination of his own heart’”.

Coming to Non-Theism
One of my favorite Biblical passages is the 23rd Psalm, especially the King James version. “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake…. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”
Who could ask for more? I cannot deny the feeling of comfort that this passage gives. In fact, it gives me the same feeling of comfort today as when I was young and believed in God. What can replace the feeling of the “everlasting arms” around us? How can I call myself a Quaker and deny this basic concept?
The process was gradual. When I was a high school special education teacher, I was able to teach courses in Chemistry, Biology and Earth Science. As I grew to a greater understanding of the breadth of the galaxies, the influence of evolution, the finiteness of biological and physical structures, the interconnectedness of it all, it became clear that there was no directive presence guiding our physical lives or the biosphere, or the universe. Couple this with the early gleanings that if God was Love, and God was directive in our lives, that God would not be punishing so many as evidenced by starvation, disease, mayhem, and the death of innocents. So both on an intellectual and gut level, I stopped believing in the God of the Bible.

Goodness Instead of God
In 1st Corinthians there is part of a passage that says “there is but one”, relating to God. Sitting in Meeting one First Day, I felt the meaning of that phrase for me was; “We are all one.” That each of us on this Earth are one. The “everlasting arms” was a metaphor for the interconnectedness of us all. It is the feeling we have for our loved ones, and the feeling that, at its best, should be extended to all.
As Kingdon W. Swayne said it in a February 15, 1980 article in Friends Journal, “I prefer to see myself not as finding and doing God’s will but as striving for goodness on the basis of general principles that are derived from my own sense of the nature of the universe.” This is my understanding of the essence of Quakerism. It is the reason we have the Queries and Testimonies. They are putting into words the methods we have to reach out to love and protect others.
In the final morning of a workshop at the Ben Lomond Quaker Center last November titled Nontheism: Can Goodness Replace God in Quaker Theology?, I asked the participants to re-write the Pacific Yearly Meeting Testimonies leaving out references to God. After the groups returned and shared the results, it was clear that God was not necessary to the meaning of the Testimonies. Integrity, Unity, Equality, Simplicity, Peace and Community are statements of the fruit of Quakerism. They stand on our individual and communal commitment to their principals, to our individual and communal commitment to all.

A Community of Seekers
For a long time I was reluctant to share my non-theist views in meeting. I did want to publicly acknowledge my feeling of separateness from the dominant theological strain of the meeting yet, I did not want to upset individual members by denying the basic precept of their belief. After “coming out”, I have received support, acknowledgement of those who believe the same or who believe differently and still support my leadings. With others there is some strain, an underlying tension that words cannot explain away.
As I read more, I realized that non-theist Friends have had the same struggle for years. An example is from the Report from the Workshop for Non-Theistic Friends, written at Friends General Conference in June of 1976:

We found in our group that we were representative of a rainbow of beliefs which exists within the larger Society of Friends. This spectrum included theists who define God as a spirit of presence which intervenes and guides in a personal way. Most were non-theists who, while believing in something universal beyond our biological selves which exists in everyone, do not believe in an eternal directing spirit. By listening to other’s expressions of their feelings and beliefs and by following our own guiding and strengthening “inner sources” we can develop our innate potential and experience personal growth. To continue to grow we feel a need to express our minority beliefs more openly and an obligation to listen to ourselves and others on a level which allows us to work together…. We hope for sensitivity and trust in our Meetings which allow us to grow in a community of seekers despite our differences ….”

Three years ago, I led a “Post-Theist” interest group at Pacific Yearly Meeting. I was shocked at the number of “Weighty Friends” that attended and shared their non-theist philosophies: former Yearly Meeting clerks, Meeting Clerks, members of ministry and oversight committees, etc. Clearly they found meaning in Quaker philosophy and in their Quaker communities; and their presence continues to enrich those around them.
In presenting the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize to the American Friends Service Committee, Gunnar Jahn, Chair of the Nobel Committee, quoted a young Quaker: “we’ve come out for a definite purpose, to build up in a spirit of love what has been destroyed in a spirit of hatred.” This spirit of love which encourages us to do good, for me, defines Quakerism, not the theological differences we might have.

Brian Vura-Weis has been an attender and member of Friends since the late 1960’s. He and his wife Dottie were married under the care of Orange Grove Monthly Meeting in 1972. He has been Co-Clerk of the Inland Valley Meeting, Clerk of the Southern California Quarterly Meeting. Brian is currently Clerk of PYM’s Discipline Committee and serves on committees at Palo Alto Monthly Meeting.

Venturing away from our families over the Christmas holidays, Blake Lipsett and I, as Right Sharing of World Resources (RSWR) board members, traveled to Sierra Leone, West Africa—one of three countries where RSWR maintains a presence. Blake and I were staying in Bo, a town about 150 miles from the capital city of Freetown. We were making “pastoral” visits to some of the projects that are funded by RSWR in this small country. Pastoral visits are a way of letting our Sierra Leone partners know that we care about the work they are doing with the micro-grants that we have given them. We listen to the women who work together in cooperatives, we walk to their rice fields, and we join them in meals.

The rest house we stayed at had a toilet down the hall and a washroom consisting of a bucket of water, which brought back memories of my long-ago Peace Corps days in Sierra Leone. In the rooms, mosquito netting no longer surrounded our beds, as the windows now had screens, but the scene was familiar with the musty smells of people, earth, and a humid climate in the dry season.

Getting up one morning I wandered out to the small verandah attached to the common room of the guest house. The plaster walls of the guest house made up three sides of the verandah with the fourth side, the front, consisting of an open doorway and a short wall that made a good place to sit. The shadow of the roofline protected us from the sun which had already risen into the haze of the Harmattan morning. (The Harmattan are the winter winds from Europe that blow across the Sahara, filling the sky with dust.) The welcoming freshness and coolness of the night had not altogether dissipated. Women’s voices came from behind the rest house in quiet chatter as pans banged and water ran.

In front of the doorway sat one man conversing with another who was getting his head shaved. There was just enough room for me to join them. After the social greetings—who we were and where we were from—one of the gentlemen asked a very basic question.
“How do you know that what you are proposing is of real use to the Sierra Leonean?”

He went on to say that Sierra Leoneans are so polite that they will say yes to anything suggested by the white wealthy Westerner, rather than counter what is being done for them, even if it is not wanted. His thoughtful question made my thoughts jump to Quaker history: stories of reaching out in love and care to others, while calling them our equals and letting them tell us what it is they think they need.

As Roland Kreager, Director of RSWR, said recently in the RSWR Newsletter, “The heart of RSWR…is a partnership. One member of the partnership is Quakers and other persons of faith seeking to live more justly, providing capital to help support micro-enterprises, and experiencing jubilee justice. The other member of the partnership is a women’s self-help group who, with the guidance of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and by their participation in the self-help group and the micro-credit project, are living Sabbath economics in their own community.”

As we know, a woman’s income goes for the betterment of her children providing them with food, medicine and an education, thus raising up the whole community. We want to empower the women we help to make their own decisions for what is best for their communities. These women will decide how to plant the rice, when to make the vegetable gardens, how to distribute the food and ultimately how to re-invest the small amount of money to make an ongoing enterprise. Making trustworthy connections is a continuing and evolutionary process that ultimately links people of vastly different life circumstances in a mutual step of faith.

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With the luxury of my three visits, I have seen a change, an evolution of need and desire. Looking back to my first trip, I know that money was well used, but used for relief from starvation, clothing children, and providing the means of survival for a small village. Dollars from RSWR sustained villages that were thrashed by civil war. We made it possible, for example, for the community of Hungbo to make it through. We created a relationship in that area of Sierra Leone that taught us, the Americans, about war and peace and about how even simple acts of development, such as supporting farm co-ops and farm infrastructure, lay ongoing foundations for peace.

As RSWR has continued to fund grants in Sierra Leone, the leadership of women has emerged. Men have stepped back. When I first visited in 2004, our projects were managed by men, with women helping and providing support to the men. Perhaps a woman would be named as the organizer, but men were the ones that talked to us, only bringing women in as an afterthought. Speeches honoring our assistance and partnership were conducted by men. Women were not the ones speaking up and describing the work that was being done. It was even difficult at times to speak to a woman. It was clear that our grants were helping a village and the women in the village, but it was not clear what real leadership the women were able to take.

On my second visit, the projects were beginning to recognize that RSWR wanted to see more women in leadership. More projects introduced women as the people who were leading efforts that benefited the entire village. Madam Sallay at Mile 91 was running an orphanage for children left parentless by the war. Oversight of this project was totally in her hands, although the procurement of the grant funds through the application process probably came from men in her community.
On my third and most recent visit, women were in the foreground. Women were always there to greet us when we began a pastoral visit to a project. The purpose of these visits is not to judge projects, but to show that we care about the lives of these people, to listen to their stories, and to hear of their great needs. The purpose is to build relationships across immense distances, both physical and material. I might find myself traipsing after the project manager down bush paths and over small creeks to the eventual project site, while the women, children and men tagged along on the way to their farms. Speeches were a time for the women to come forward and tell us about their plans and desires for their lives and the lives of their children.

On the side women would tell us what they went through during the war. One woman told how her husband separated from her and the children so the rebels would treat them more humanely, giving the family a greater chance of surviving. Today both this woman and her husband are involved with NGOs that help the local community grow food and help with youth justice. This same women also told me how women became prostitutes just to feed their children. They did the act, they got paid, and they used the money to buy food for their children and to make a fresh start. I found myself almost unable to take in this concept, looking at these women of such dignity. I could hardly imagine how their lives had been.

At one project, I asked the project manager, Sophiatu, how she had come to know about RSWR. She had found us on the internet! Sophiatu was finishing her degree in agriculture. Her RSWR project was then noticed by Adama Bundu, who was visiting a relative in Sophiatu’s village. Adama then decided she needed to do the same for her community, which is on the outskirts of Freetown. This area is on a hillside that was forested 30 years ago, but after the war, is covered with homes, sheds, and huts built every which way. During the rainy season the soil is literally washed to the estuary, turning the sea to reddish brown. Their farming helps protect the land as well as provide food and income for another group of women.

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During the thirty years stretching from the time I was a Peace Corps teacher until today, there has been a hunger in my soul to connect to those I had felt so at home with despite the vast differences in circumstance and setting. I do not want to be a missionary. I do not want to tell someone else how to live. Still I am curious what it is that pulls me back to this small country. It is partly that God calls us to share some of the material abundance that we enjoy in America. But it is also the admiration I have for many of the people I meet in Sierra Leone. I admire the Sierra Leoneans who are helping desperate people and doing so with calmness and assurance that attracts me to their ways. I admire them and want to be more like them back home in my own community; I want people to appreciate the gifts of these folks so far away.

Three times now I have met with Muckson, a community developer. He continues to amaze me with his insight into what needs to be done next in his community. What has resulted from the efforts of this community as shaped by local vision and planning? The list is long: a radio station, a peace and reconciliation program, plans for nurturing and healing children orphaned and traumatized by the war, a plant nursery to encourage planting of oil palms for oil used in cooking, a plan to bottle fruit juice to use the local pineapples, oranges and mangoes. The list continues to grow. In each of these projects people are empowered to find a way to better themselves and the lives of the children.
Muckson sees this as a way to make peace so that war does not again visit his small poor country. People able to engage in their own betterment will not need war. Quakers in their various ways try to walk paths of peace. As a Quaker, it is fascinating for me to observe this Sierra Leonean man lead his community on the paths of peace. I feel honored to know this man. My own life is enriched by his example. This is what brings me joy and energy.

Much is possible for Sierra Leone. Women are learning that they can organize and do more for themselves and their children together than they can do separately. Women are gaining strength by learning new skills and competencies. Women who have long been the small shop keepers of the market can now move into larger arenas.
Here is a place where I have come down just right. I am so blessed. The hunger in my soul is filled by the tasks at hand.

Lucretia Humprey is a member of Heartland Monthly Meeting in Billings, Montana. Portions of this article appeared in RSWR’s 1st Quarter Newsletter in 2009.