A Thing So Small

Criticism of Quaker involvement in OWS

2011-11-20T16:55:00.000-08:00

I was sent this document on Google docs. It is a very critical, almost anti-Quaker, commentary on Philadelphia Friends' involvement with Occupy Wall Street. I was sent it anonymously, without the ability to comment on it, the ability even to share it, or with an accompanying note explaining why someone wanted to send it to me. Given these circumstances, I am quite suspicious of the motivation of whoever sent it to me.

Despite these concerns, I think it raises some interesting points that I would like to see us discuss. I saved my own copy so that I could link it above. It is entirely public and anyone may comment (either there or here) but not edit, so as to preserve the original sentiment.

Cross-posted to Quaker-Quaker here.

Boethius

2011-05-24T19:04:00.001-07:00

I just finished my first read of Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy.

There was a lot in there, and a lot I haven't digested or that I disagree with on first blush. The last of the five books discusses the endless debate over free will versus Divine foreknowledge. The orthodox position is to believe in both: free will and foreknowledge, and the almost equally orthodox struggle is trying to figure out how the two of them can possibly be compatible (especially as foreknowledge, in some positions (such as Calvin's, I believe) is equated with predestination).

Boethius (in the voice of Lady Philosophy) gives a very interesting and frankly compelling argument as to why Divine foreknowledge is not the same as predestination. He points out that our earthly knowledge or foreknowledge of an event doesn't mean that it is inevitable. He asks us to consider a person watching a man walking as the sun rises. Because we see both things, we know that they are happening, but the sun rising is inevitable while the man walking is not. Since God comprehends everything in the Eternal Present (Boethius argues), his foreknowledge of our actions no more compels us to act than our present knowledge of the man walking compels him to act.

I enjoyed this analogy (even if I'm not sure I agree, I still like it very much) and considered another one:

I know my best friend as well as I know anyone. I can reliably predict whether or not he'll like a book, what will make him laugh, and where he'll sit around a restaurant table. He can predict the same things about me (actually, he's rather better at it). No one on the outside looking in, however, would suggest that when we're around each other we lose our free will, no matter how good we get at predicting each other. Almost the reverse: being around someone who knows you and cares for you deeply can be remarkably freeing. I am given more choices because I trust that no matter what I do or say I will still be loved.

All respects to my best friend, the God of my faith loves and knows me infinitely more, and is also infinitely more wise. Is it too much of a stretch to conjecture that He has that much more foreknowledge of my actions, and that I am simultaneously even more freed?

Moby Dick

2011-05-23T19:06:00.001-07:00

I finished reading Moby Dick recently, and among other things it got me musing about faith in God, revelations of the Divine, and the natural world.

In the novel, the obsessed Ahab sees the white whale who took off his leg (the titular Moby Dick) as a living representation of something diabolical:

"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines."

I have religious friends to whom every little event --- a traffic light turning green at just the right time, or a sunny day for their vacation, or their cold getting better after a prayer --- every little event is a Sign or Work of God. God is the "unknown but still reasoning thing" that "puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the [pasteboard] mask."

It's awfully tempting. I do have faith (most of the time!) in a personal God who cares about my doings and has power in the world we see around us. Like Ahab, I feel as if I am straining to see "the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask" of this world. Sometimes I think I've found those features, too --- perhaps not in the traffic lights, but maybe in other events: a chance meeting, a shooting star, an unexpected phone call. And this is not particularly unorthodox.

But Ahab, as his mate Starbuck points out, is mad:

"Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."

Starbuck is right --- it is crazy to impute all of this "inscrutable malice" to a whale, a part of nature, and the book is fairly clear that Ahab sees this malice only because of his peculiar monomania about it. A whale is a whale and pursues his own whale nature. We might as well strike the sun for shining. So why is seeing malice in the world so crazy when seeing God in the world is so orthodox?

But in Melville's world past (and present) where many people thought (and still think!) about God as I have outlined above, it was (and still is) a narrow leap to make. Honestly, the fact that I (and many others) find that leap so illogical- and immediately start arguing against it- "Ahab, stop- there is naught behind the wall"- is the argument that most compels me towards atheism. Because if I refuse to see malice- devils- demons- behind the wall, why should I see the Divine?

Nevertheless, I do see it- the Divine grace. Every day I see it. And while I believe in evil in the human heart, I don't believe in a reasoning evil, a demonic evil, striking through the mask and thrusting through the wall. This might be either because of my theological naivete or again because of my ultimate optimism about the goodness of the universe.

I'll have to mull it over and take my pick- and wonder, what's the orthodox Quaker take on this?

Spiritual Journeys

2011-01-06T19:59:00.000-08:00

I shan't open this post with promises to post more. Unfortunately for my fond desire to become an internet blogging sensation, I am only occasionally moved to post- occasionally, apparently, being once a year. But here I am again!

I have been asked by my Meeting to present at a new institution for us: the Spiritual Breakfast. A member is to come and speak about their spiritual path, over breakfast and coffee provided by Ministry and Counsel. Mine is the second of these events, and I did not make it to the first, so I have no idea what is expected of me. I have, however, been given a list of questions to respond to. At first I thought they were frustratingly vague, but after putting them away for a while and then returning, I have found them more fruitful.

I have an hour and fifteen minutes, including questions. In order to fill it in, I have been working through the questions provided. My first thought was to create merely a rough outline of what I might say. I seem, however, to think in conversational essays. Which are the stuff blogs are made of.

Here are the questions:

When did you first identify that your life was/is a spiritual journey?

What are the important elements of your spiritual process now?

At this point in your spiritual journey can you identify some patterns/ways in which the Spirit is leading you?

Do you have a favorite(s) passage, reading, poem, hymn or image that is meaningful to you to share with the group?

Who has been a spiritual role model or mentor? How and in what ways?

This is a rather formidable list, especially as I took the first question as an opportunity to describe my journey thus far. I also found that my answer to it encompassed my answer to the fifth question. Here is what I have written thus far, edited for a blog audience.

Conversational Essay #1: When did you first identify that your life was/is a spiritual journey? and Who has been a spiritual role model or mentor? How and in what ways?

I've always believed that life was a spiritual experience. I was born Catholic. However, I didn't see it so much as a journey. It seemed like a home, the final destination. I don't remember a moment when doubt first began, but I do remember a moment on the school bus when I said, 'All right, God, I think you don't exist, but if you do, you should give me some big sign, like a bolt of lightning, so I'll know.' And He didn't. Faith then seemed very black and white to me: God was or He wasn't, and there was no room for doubt. So that was that.

Years went by. I never lost my sense that there was Something Bigger, be that the Goddess or Ethics or humanity's accomplishments, and by turns I tried neo-paganism and atheism and Unitarian Universalism. I believe I even attended a Quaker Meeting once or twice. Nothing stuck.

I feel as if I talk about my conversion experience all the time, so I apologize if you've heard this before. However, this story remains central to the narrative of my faith today so I'm going to tell it anyway. A version of this story was published in the on-line edition of Friends Journal this summer: Christ Stopped Me on the Highway.

In college I dated an abusive man, whose main technique for keeping me in the relationship was convincing me that if I left him I would be a horrible person, that my only personal value was in dating him, and nothing that I wanted to accomplish independently in life amounted to much, etc. Understandably, I was miserable.

A little bit of advice for those who may know folk in similar situations- be very careful about slamming the abuser in front of the abused, because unless the victim is quite ready to admit that she is a victim- and most aren't, right away- you will shut out her confidences. This is what happened to me. I felt that I could not confide in my friends because they would only say bad things about my boyfriend, and I was not ready to face those truths. Since my boyfriend was simultaneously trying to keep me from spending time with my friends, whom he called 'a bad influence,' I felt increasingly isolated.

During all of this, and almost out of the blue (or at least that's how it seems in retrospect), I came to rely on one friend in particular. He was one of approximately three conservative Christians on my very liberal college campus. He didn't approve of sex before marriage, and I was sleeping with my boyfriend. I was studying evolutionary biology, and he didn't really believe in evolution. I hadn't known him very well prior to my crisis.

Nevertheless, the first time I turned to him in a moment of lonely desperation, he was there for me. He would stay up until dawn listening to me if I needed an ear, once drove two or three miles through a blizzard to come hold my hand in the middle of the night, and eventually, when my boyfriend grew physically aggressive, stepped between the two of us to protect me.

I would ask him all sorts of question about his religion. For instance, I was concerned that he might think less of me for having sex before marriage, although I never felt judged in his company. I can't remember this conversation exactly, but I seem to recall that he looked at me like I had two heads and said something along the lines of, 'Just because what you do wrong is public doesn't make you a worse person than I am, when I make mistakes all the time in private,' or words to that effect.

I also asked him how and why he had done all of that for someone he barely knew at the time. He told me, “I don't have the strength to do this. It's not I who is doing this for you, but Christ through me.”

This was the single most important moment in my conversion, although it didn't end there- in fact it barely began there.

I had thought religion was a matter of intellectual belief. You either thought that Jesus was raised from the dead or you didn't, much the same way you thought that a^2 + b^2 = c^2, or you didn't. And if you couldn't believe in a set of religious propositions the way you believed in a set of mathematic or historical or scientific propositions, then there was nothing traditional religion could do for you.

This one moment changed everything for me, because it was my first glimpse of transformative religion, a religion not about accepting propositions but about letting oneself be utterly changed and made new by the love and grace of God. I think, also, this was my first taste of what I would later come to call redemption. Although I felt worthless in my terrible relationship, the love of Christ redeemed me, gave me worth again. In His eyes, as I could see them through the eyes of my friend, I knew I was worthy of love.

Sister Helen Prejean said to the men she was ministering to on Death Row, “No one should die without seeing a loving face. I will be the face of Christ to you.”

I decided that whether or not I could accept propositions (deciding I could accept them would come later), I wanted to be that face of Christ for someone in need, and therefore I wanted to be a Christian.

The question was, what sort of Christian would I be?

That summer I had an internship in a biology lab in South Carolina. All of us interns shared housing in nearby apartments. My room-mate, and indeed most of the other participants in the program, were conservative Christians. Several of them attended the same church and Bible study, and I was invited to attend as well, but I felt too uncomfortable to accept. My friend from home had (and still has) a remarkable capacity for showing the same love to a person no matter how deeply he disagrees with their actions or beliefs. The people here, while pleasant, did not have that gift, and I felt like an outsider.

So I was lonely twice a week when my room-mate left for Bible study and church. I called my mother to complain, who wisely suggested, “Try looking up the Quakers.”

I grew up about 20 minutes from Old Chatham Monthly Meeting of New York Yearly Meeting. You might know it- it's held at Powell House, which is also NYYM's retreat center. Anyway, I had been there a time or two (as mentioned way back in paragraph two), it was lovely, and my mother's suggestion fell on fertile ground.

There is a strong unprogrammed Quaker presence in South Carolina, including a meeting in Columbia, where I was living. Although all the attenders knew I was only there for the summer, I was taken in warmly. I went to Meeting, Worship-sharing, a lunch or two out at an Indian restaurant, and a long march against nuclear weapons with a pair of Buddhist monks and attenders of this meeting.

The silence of that Meeting held me. Not only were the attenders gracious, but the worship was deep, some of the deepest I've known. That summer, I felt as if every Meeting for Worship was the pulse of my heart, propelling me through the days to return, each week, back to Meeting.

One couple in particular stood out. They had been called to prison ministry, and exchanged letters with a mentally ill and imprisoned man. I gathered that he had been imprisoned for crimes related, more or less, to being mentally ill and homeless. When he was released, they took him in, arranged for his housing, and drove him to and fro, including to Meeting where he seemed to be welcomed by all. As my friend had, they seemed to take their good works for granted- an integral part of their faith and life, not something extra that they deserved praise for.

And that, I believe, is when I decided that of all kinds of Christian, I would be a Quaker.

Why I Don't Care for Wearing Name Tags in Meeting

2009-11-15T13:39:00.000-08:00

Strange, I know. Wearing name tags in Meeting is one of those Quaker traditions hard to shake- even though it's not particularly traditional as all, as far as my extensive investigations reveal.

It is also a custom so petty that it's questionable why I'm bothered by it at all. But I am. Granted I'm not routinely concerned about it. On a scale of 1-10 of Great Quaker Issues, this rates probably a 2-3, barely beating out the eternal Rug Debate (bare hardwood floors or tasteful area rugs in the meeting house?) and ranking far, far under things like NEYM's relationship to FUM (I am SO not going there today). But occasionally the Name Tag Affair gets to me- like today.

The point of a name tag, of course, is to be friendly towards outsiders, to help everyone get to know each other, and to promote a sense of community. I'm afraid that for me, it doesn't really do any of the above.

I want people to have to ask me my name. I want that initial interaction. If I've forgotten a name that I should know, I want to be humble enough to ask! Conversely, if someone has forgotten my name, I want them to come up to me and ask (or at least ask the person on the bench next to them). More community is formed from these simple social niceties than is ever created by wearing tags.

I don't want the artificial familiarity that name tags create. I don't want someone to come up and call me by name when we have not met- I find this very uncomfortable. I want to be approached and asked for my name. Names, I believe, are a gift, always to be politely asked for and graciously given (or not given, depending on the circumstance!) . Name tags, I feel, make it too easy for us to pretend to know each other.

A practice intended to make visitors feel welcome does, I feel, just the opposite. If I walk into a room and everyone is wearing name tags but me, I feel like I am intruding upon a strange fraternity. It's almost more awkward when I, the visitor to this group, am asked to make one myself. More than once, in fact, I have been approached by a friendly greeter who skips right over introducing herself and asking my name- in favor of asking me to make a name tag! How backwards is that?

In a true community, everyone knows everyone else (more or less) by name. This much is true. But it doesn't make our Quaker meetings any better of a community by faking it! I've noticed that more traditional denominations- the Baptists, the Catholics, the Seventh Day Adventists- would never dream of asking all their congregates to wear name tags. And yet, their sense of community does not seem in suffer. And visitors certainly don't hesitate to come- aren't the Baptists one of the fastest-growing denominations in America?

Perhaps, instead of wearing name tags, we could make a greater effort to reach out to one another. Perhaps, instead of huddling with our particular friends after Meeting (and I'm guilty of this one, too!) we could approach someone we don't know as well. I'd like to see more fellowship in my Meeting, absolutely. In fact, I think that a lack of fellowship a 10/10 on the scale of Great Quaker Issues. I'm just not sure if we're going about it in the right ways (and something tells me that NEYM cutting itself off from FUM isn't the right way to go about it, either . . . but, wait! Not going there!).

A Ministry of Food

2009-11-09T05:50:00.001-08:00

I love to cook. I feel like feeding everyone who comes into my life is a ministry, one I often feel called to. Sometimes it is not only a pleasure and a ministry, but a delightful adventure, the latest of which I will now share.

The Meeting I currently attend has 'hospitality' every week- a light spread of snacks for everyone to nibble. Love of cooking or not, I had avoided volunteering for a week, because I am often overwhelmed with other responsibilities. This past First Day, however, was a business meeting, when a heavier lunch is provided. And I volunteered.

Now, I cooked for 75 at my wedding (with generous help with many friends) and I love to take on projects, as mentioned above. So, 7th day evening, I set out to make a half-dozen spinach feta pies- a delicious cross between quiche and spanakopita.

Shopping for this endeavor was an endeavor in itself. I got hilarious looks from the deli manager when I asked for four pounds of feta cheese- just for instance. But I got it all home (including six pre-made pie crusts), mixed it all up in a 2 1/2 gallon stockpot, poured it into the pie shells, and cooked off six 9-inch quiches over the course of two hours (they had to go into my oven in shifts). Rob and I ate half of one for dinner 7th day night, and gave the other half to our landlord and lady. Four pies went to Meeting the next day. Two were utterly consumed, and the other two were wrapped and popped into the Meeting freezer, to be saved for a needy member. The last pie we split yesterday evening with two friends, a big salad, and a bottle of fine wine. It all came out beautifully. Next time I'll make my own pie crust, as well.

I love cooking on the grand scale even more than I love cooking for me and my husband alone. I love buying ingredients by the pound. I love improvising the tools of an industrial kitchen in my tiny apartment kitchen. But mostly I love how many people I can reach. I love being able to feed everyone in my Meeting, all at once. I give to charities and all of that, but I'm afraid I'm a rather literal-minded Quaker, and I like the immediacy of this sort of feeding the hungry.

I've volunteered to cook dinner at Quarterly Meeting, hosted by my Meeting this 12th month, and I am already excitedly planning the meal. Updates to follow, I hope.

Recipe for Spinach-Feta Spanakopita-Quiches, adapted from Moosewood.

6 nine-inch pie crusts (bought or made)
Two heads hard-neck garlic (or 10-12 large cloves softneck).
2 1/2 pounds yellow onions.
2 pounds frozen spinach (or somewhat more fresh).
2 dozen eggs, plus one.
2 1/2 pounds Ricotta cheese (you could substitute grated Swiss for part of this measure- I will next time I make the recipe).
4 pounds Feta cheese, crumbled.
2-4 ounces fresh dill, depending how dilly you like things (I used 4 and it was a bit much).
Salt and Pepper to taste.
Olive oil for sauteing.

Preheat the oven to 350. Thaw the spinach, or cook it if needed. Drain well.

Saute the onions and garlic together with the olive oil in the bottom of a large stock pot, until the onions are translucent but not browned. Remove from heat. Beat in the eggs, followed by the remaining ingredients. If using Swiss, reserve 3 cups at this point for sprinkling on top of the pies.

The batter should be quite thick, more scoopable than pourable. Divide among the six pie dishes, right up to the brim. Top with 1/2 cup of Swiss per pie, if desired. Bake for one hour at 350. Remove, and let set for one hour before serving. Serves 36-48, depending on slice size and what else people are eating!

Enjoy! Feed the world!

Well, so much for posting every week . . .

2007-08-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

. . . round two! I have been inspired to write again by my dear friend Amanda (of the best stuff, but plain and/or cracked).

This post has nothing to do with you, m'dear, but I wouldn't have posted at all if we hadn't talked last night.

So a few weeks ago (well, weeks ago when I wrote up this post in my word doc; a few months now) I went to an interfaith panel discussion at my college. There were a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew all answering questions about faith and secularism in the modern world. The Muslim's first name was Fez. Even among a panel of academics, he was remarkably articulate, and something he said very much stuck with me. He said that in Islam there is a theological division made between those who follow God for their own reasons (wanting to go to heaven, for example), and those who follow God with no thought of reward, but only for love. He then said that he personally does not like to make this distinction, because it results in too much judging.

I, on the other hand, was thinking how much I wished Christianity made this distinction. I remember a number of months at all, in my ecumenical Bible study which I have mentioned in numerous other essays, I mentioned that my reasons for being a Christian had nothing to do with my salvation at all. I received looks as if I had three heads. It seemed to be the feel of the room that if I was not focused on my salvation, I was missing what Christianity was about.

I don't want to pretend to be more spiritually advanced than anyone else. I wish that we made this distinction in Christianity because I want more ways of looking at faith to be more widely accepted. Maybe the right way IS to be totally focused on one's own salvation (I doubt it, but it's possible), but I wish that, especially among more conservative strains of my religion, other possibilities were acknowledged. I can't quite express how liberating it felt to have someone else, even someone of a different faith, express these different ways of approaching religion. Mmm.

Graduate school and convicting verses

2007-04-15T15:13:00.000-07:00

Before I start in on religion, a bit of personal news: I have been accepted to graduate school! I was initially wait-listed, and very disappointed, but on Tuesday I received word that a place has opened up, and I am in! School starts in the fall. I call it grad school, but really it is an odd chimera of grad school, nursing school, and med school. I've been accepted into a program which takes folks like me, who have a bachelor's degree and no nursing background, and in a few years (four or five, I think) turns them into Nurse Practitioners. For the unenlightened, a Nurse Practitioner is rather like a doctor: she can prescribe medication, practice independently (depending on the state), and function as the primary health care practitioner for any individual. From what I understand after talking to a number of health care practitioners, the biggest different between an NP and an MD is the nature of the training; an NP's training is more patient-focused and an MD's training is more disease-focused. If one is interested in pursuing a specialty, an MD is the way to go, but for someone like me, whose goal in life is to work as a general practitioner with the rural poor, being an NP is just the thing. Needless to say, I am amazingly, overwhelmingly excited and pleased, and will probably be rambling on about this at regular intervals, especially after school starts up (school! yes!).

The greatest impediment to my writing regularly about faith (or anything, really) is that I have so very many ideas that I can never choose which one to write about. Each one looks better than the next, and so like the old man in one of my favorite children's books (Hundreds of cats! Thousands of cats! Millions and billions and trillions of cats!), I never can leave one behind, and therefore become absolutely overwhelmed with the effort.

For now, though, I'd like to offer up a Bible verse that's been kicking around in my head.

Matthew 5:21-22: You have heard that our forefathers were told, “Do not commit murder; anyone who commits murder must be brought to justice.” But what I tell you is this: Anyone who nurses anger against his brother must be brought to justice. Whoever calls his brother “good for nothing” deserves the sentence of the court; whoever calls him “fool” deserves hellfire.

There was a bit of a discussion about these verses in my ecumenical (and sometimes acrimonious) Bible study a few weeks back. Some of us have been eternally puzzled by these verses, especially those of us with siblings. Jesus never seemed to be above some righteous name-calling; he certainly called the scribes and Pharisees a lot worse things than 'fool,' especially around the times when he was hurling tables and laying about with a whip. And surely, calling someone a fool in a moment of anger is not nearly as bad as murder.

So why these verses? Is it a case of 'do what I say, not what I do, because I'm the Son of God?'

I wasn't able to articulate it at the time, but eventually I came up with this, and I'd really like to hear from the Biblical scholars out there whether you think I'm on the right track.

I think these verses aren't referring toangrily calling your little sister a fool when she drives your car into a ditch, but rather about the utter dismissal of another human being that we can all be prone to when we disagree with someone very deeply. This verse convicted me because it is something I catch myself doing, and that I see uncomfortably often in my happy liberal community. I'll use George Bush as an example, as he's very convenient. I'll be the first to admit that I disagree with George Bush on almost any point of politics that you care to name. Yet it can't be very charitable of me when I sneer at his voice on the radio, or roll my eyes and mutter 'that idiot' every time I read a quote, without giving him even the chance to make himself heard.

There's a certain awful dismissal that one can give to another person, the message: you are entirely worthless, a fool, and nothing you say has any importance at all. In a very real way, I think this dismissal is comparable to murder. I might not be harming our president by my dismissal of him, but if I dismiss someone more intimately connected to me, the harm is very real indeed. Oh dear.

I have returned from Hiatus

2007-04-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

Back from long and semi-intentional hiatus.

Over the past year, I have:

Graduated from college.

Moved to a small cabin in the woods without electricity or running water partially as en exercise in simplicity (soon to be over; in two weeks I am moving to a small cabin in the woods with electricity and running water).

Found a full-time job working at a worker owned wool mill.

Applied and been rejected to graduate school in nursing.

Joined Volunteer Fire and Rescue in my small town.

Spent a year teaching First-Day-School to teenagers- to be repeated next year!

When I first started this blog, I tried never to post unless I felt truly moved. I am now, instead, going to undertake an experiment. I would like to post at least briefly every weekend, moved or not. The exercise in writing is important to me, as I miss the intellectual pressure of academia.

If anyone is still reading, please stay tuned! More to follow.

Prayer

2006-06-03T04:38:00.000-07:00

When my friend stands next to me and says, “I’ll pray for you,” I do not know what to think. I have a slight head cold. I am on the last day of my cold, the day where you feel more or less better but your voice is gravelly and you’re blowing your nose at every opportunity. I do not think I need to be prayed for, not for this. “I’m mostly better,” I say. “I’ll pray for you anyway,” he says.

I believe in prayer. I am not sure when this happened. I used to look at headlines in magazines that said things like “Prayer Study Shows No Effect on Health,” and feel slightly smug. Four years later, I look at those same headlines and feel exasperated. Clearly, I think, someone is missing the point.

I believe in prayer, but when B. stands next to me and says “I’ll pray for you,” for the moment all I can feel is a desire that he’d pray for someone else, or at least over some other part of my life. It’s not that I don’t want to be prayed for. When I’m breaking up with my boyfriend, when my grandfather is in the hospital, when I’ve just lost my job, when I am furious with God and can’t pray myself, at these times I want to be prayed for. In the middle of the night, when a loved one was frighteningly late returning from a journey, I have called this same friend and begged him to pray.

Prayer is not a panacea as far as I am concerned, and perhaps this why I do not wish B. to pray over my cold. This is also why I roll my eyes at those newspaper headlines. Whether prayer is statistically significant is simply not a factor I find worth considering.

I know a little child who was molested. The day I found out, I came home almost in tears and furious. I couldn’t decide what to be angry at: the human who did the molesting, or the society that could breed such an evil, the bureaucracy that prevented me from doing much of anything besides report it and hope someone somewhere would do their job, myself for being helpless, or God for bloody everything. I settled on a blend among all of these things, but mostly I was angry at God. This was a child whom I cared for, whom I loved, even- whom I had prayed for.

More or less, I manage to not be furious at God for hurricanes and cancer and earthquakes and AIDS. I believe in the will of God, but I do not believe that the will of God involves a perfect fairyland with no death. I believe in the will of God as a great Pattern of which death is an inextricable part. That death is necessary for life is something that any neo-pagan or oncologist can tell you. I can accept death as part of the will of God. But I rage because while I believe death to be part of the will of God, evil never is. I can accept lightning strikes, but not child molesters.

Why? Because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has jurisdiction in the providences of the human heart, and very much I want her to step in and say, “Whoa now, Adolf, maybe you better be thinking less about scapegoats and more about good economic incentives to get the German economy up and running . . .”

At the same time, I recognize (however sulkily) that we must invite God into our hearts, because if she could interfere in our choices without our permission, life would be pretty much meaningless.

I live right next door to the hospital, and I hear the sirens go by at all hours. The sirens are my muezzin; they call me always to prayer. I pray that the medics are strong and do their job well, and can sleep that night without regrets. I pray that their patient feels safe and cared for and loved. I pray that the patient’s family is loved, and that if their loved one dies, that everyone else will bring casseroles. I pray for all of these things because I believe that any act of pure love is an expression of the will of God. If God wills a person to die, she also wills them to die while being cared for and loved.

I do not know if God will always act to save a person’s life, but my faith tells me that she will always act to surround them with love. Even as I believe God cannot enter us without our permission, I also believe that no matter how tightly locked the gates, she can stand outside of them and whisper. I imagine her whispering to the medics, whispering to the terrified patient, whispering to the grieving family, and whispering to all their friends so they bring lots of casseroles. And if one chooses to let her in, she can do much more than whisper.

Love is the essence of God, and this, in the end, is how I explain my prayer to my more skeptical friends, the ones who don’t offer to pray for me when I have a cold. If God is real, then my prayer, an act of love, invokes God, the greatest love of all. But even if God doesn’t exist or doesn’t care, my prayer is still an act of love. And an act of love never goes amiss. Even if no ears hear it, even if no God responds, I have exercised my soul to love just a little better. Love, I find, takes practice; it is not simply an emotion one has. Prayer stretches my capacity to love. When I pray regularly, I find it that much easier to forgive, to hold my sharp tongue, to take the time to make casserole.

I believe any act of love to be an act of prayer. Children teach this to me best. “She hit me!” says one small child. “I know,” I say. “But it was an accident, and she said she was sorry, and look, she’s almost crying. She really is sorry. When someone hurts you, and then is truly sorry, it is your turn to forgive them.” The small child says, “My mother says- sorry isn’t enough!” I look at them and say, “Sometimes when you’re sorry for something, you also need to do a little of work to make it right, like if you spill milk you need to help clean it up. But really and truly, if your friend hurts you and then is sorry, it must be enough. It is enough.”

Maybe this is lying, because I know that there will be times in these children’s lives when sorry isn’t enough, times when they will beg forgiveness and not receive it. But my reassurance to them is a prayer- that they will be lucky, that they will be forgiven.

And here I am back next to my friend, who has offered to pray for my cold, even though I didn’t want him to pray over it. I didn’t want it because I don’t see my cold as against the will of God, but also because I cannot bear to believe that B.’s prayer would cause God to cure my cold, or that my prayer will cure the person in the ambulance. If I believed that, I would have to ask myself why God is not busy curing more important things: like child molestation. Like hurricanes. Like cancer. I do not have enough faith to do this. Perhaps B. does, and I am envious.

I am standing here because B. showed up at my door and said he didn’t have a way to get home and I said “I’ll drive you,” before he had the chance to ask. That act was my prayer for him, and he accepted it for what it was. So now here I am in his driveway, and with thanks I accept his prayer for me and my cold, because no matter my opinions about the will of God for the rhinovirus, his prayer for me is an act of love and, therefore, an expression of the will of God.

Bible Squee

2006-04-23T21:28:00.000-07:00

Translations and commentaries are important to me no matter what I'm reading, and I'm oh-so-picky.

Odyssy and Iliad: Robert Fagles.
Shakespeare: The Arden editions, period, and Harold Bloom commentary. (Harold Bloom commentary makes anything worth reading. It's like marinara sauce. Add it, and I'll eat anything).
Tao Te Ching: Witter Bynner or Stephen Mitchell (I also like Stephen Mitchell's Rumi)
Sherlock Holmes: I have the nine-volume hardcover annotated Oxford edition.
Darwin: still torn between the Wilson and Watson commentaries.

I get very excited about nifty editions of the Bible. Today I dug up a 1966 Jerusalem Bible at my parents' house, which they let me keep.

The Jerusalem Bible was translated by Dominican monks in the first half of the 20th century. They tried to be relatively literal, yet write in 'modern' English, yet stay true to the flavor of each book. Thus the Psalms read like songs, the Epistles read like letters, etc. It's a single-column Bible, which I prefer, and it's not a red-letter Bible (I hate red-letter Bibles). It's a Catholic Bible, which also pleases me, and the books of the Apocrypha are in their proper places, not squished between the Old and New Testaments. There's a fairly substantial essay of commentary before each book, as well as extensive discursive footnotes at the bottom of each right-hand page. The verse numbers are in the inside margins, not in the text, which makes everything flow better. Plus, just as the corners of a page in a dictionary reference the first and last words found therein, the chapter and verse are referenced here.

I'm most excited about the outside margins. They contain what is essentially a running concordance- alongside each line of text are the citations for verses which allude to/refer back to/are parallel to the verse in question. This is wonderful. When a verse is directly quoting another verse, it's placed in italics. Even better.

The language of this translation is spare and elegant. Yes, it's a modern translation, and the Psalms sound nothing like the KJV, but it's not flat and ugly like so many of the 'contemporary' Bibles out there. Yay.

And the icing on the cake? Well, I have an affection for the KJV because so many writers of the time came together to complete it, and it's suspected Shakespeare was among them. You know who was a major contributor to the Jerusalem Bible?

J.R.R. Tolkien.

Oh, yes. Oh yes indeed.

Leavened bread

2006-04-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

Pondering the Resurrection this Easter, I find joy in the fact that it no longer throws me into agonies about my belief or lack thereof.

I guess I'm learning that belief is different from faith. I have faith in the people I love. When I am separated from them, I still have faith in their love for me, and mine for them, regardless of their absence. I don't need to believe that they are present in order to have faith in them.

What I found myself meditating on today during Meeting were the parables Jesus used to teach about the Kingdom of Heaven- the mustard seed, and the leavened bread.

I read a parable spoken by a desert father. His student asked him about the meaning of the Resurrection. In response, he took a lump of salt and dropped it in a vessel of water, then walked away. The next day, the father and the student came back. Can you see the salt? the father asked. No, replied the student. Taste the water, said the father. The student did; it was salty. And that, said the father, was the meaning of the Resurrection. The body dissolved, but now in every drop of water.

So with the bread and the yeast and the Kingdom of Heaven; the yeast vanishes into the bread and yet imparts its leaven upon the whole. This parable is all the more dear to me because it speaks of something so mundane. The Jews Jesus was speaking to would have viewed leavened bread as profane; it was unleavened bread that was sacred. The Resurrection and, thus, the Kingdom of Heaven seep into our mundane lives to transform them.

I might not be able to believe that Christ rose from the dead, but I have faith in it, just as I have faith that I am loved, that spring will come again, that bread will rise.

John 14:6

2006-04-10T19:11:00.000-07:00

There is no verse in the Bible I struggle with so much as this one.

I am about to plot out my struggle for all of you. I'm not sure if this struggle is a particularly Quaker struggle. I feel like I should be able to either happily ignore all the verses in the Bible I don't like, because it's an error-filled historical document, or ignore my problems with various verses, because the Bible is the Inerrant Word of God, Amen, period. But neither of those approaches satisfies me either intellectually or spiritually.

After many years, I came back to Christianity because of Christ's gospel of love. Love for everyone, including the sinners and Samaritans and people we don't like. The God I worship is a God of inclusive love. A Christian friend perhaps a year ago, just about the time I was truly coming back to my faith, spent some time trying to convince me that I could not call myself a Christian and believe that there were other paths, and she cited this verse- 'no man comes to the Father except through me.' If she had convinced me that this was a true dichotomy, I would never have come back.

There are layers and layers of feeling I have about this verse. Part of the time I just say, "Argh, I can't deal with that verse. It sums up everything I hate about Christianity. Ugh." Part of the time I say, "Surely that was not in the original. Surely that was a later interpolation," and honestly, most of the scholarship I've read suggests that this is likely (the Gospel of John diverges widely from the other three, synoptic Gospels, and is widely regarded as the least accurate in regards to the specifics of Christ's life).

Part of me, though- maybe the faithful part, and maybe the dishonest part- wants to find a way to reconcile my beliefs to this verse, or this verse to my beliefs. And this calls into violent tumult all my views about the Bible. I do believe that the Bible is Divinely inspired, just as I believe that most messages in Meeting are Divinely inspired. But I surely don't think that messages in Meeting are inerrant, and nor do I think the Bible is. Nevertheless, I learn a lot from my fundamentalist friends, and as they keep reminding me when I bring up my struggle with this verse or that (how can they NOT struggle?!), I am not meant to lean on my own understanding.

Well. I think I am meant to lean on my own understanding, in part. As I seem to mention at least once a post, I am a scientist, and I think our minds are meant my God to be used. If men didn't lean on their own understanding some, we'd still be praying for miraculous cures instead of using antibiotics. And as the death rates among religious communities which forswear medicine in exchange for prayer can attest, sometimes antibiotics are just what a body needs.

But if I leant on my own understanding entirely, I'd still be floating in a vague New-Age spirituality, on no real path. I chose to walk this road because I want that structure and guidance, and I am looking for a bit of a roadmap to the Divine will. My faith tradition says that's the Bible- fine. But I am looking for a consistent way to view the Bible. I believe it's inspired, I believe it's a historical document, I believe it's truthful, I believe it needs to be viewed in context, I don't believe it's inerrant, I do believe that it's holy, I don't believe that it's perfect, I do believe that it's God-breathed, I don't believe that it's meant literally . . .

But where does this get me? When I'm staring a difficult verse in the face, what do I do with it? I don't mean a 'difficult verse' like the silly ones about the mustard seed being the smallest seed (it isn't) or rabbits being unclean because they chew the cud (they don't). Because I don't think the Bible is inerrant and these are such minor errors, it doesn't take much shrugging to not be bothered by this. But what about John 14:6?

I am the way, and the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me.

If there is one deep, religious insight I feel like I've ever gained in my life it is this: There is only one Truth, but no one has any bloody clue what it is. The job of religions is to get us as close to it as we possibly can, but only God knows the whole of it. I'm inclined to think that Truth is just plain unknowable by humans- after all, God is truth, and God is unknowable. And while this belief in the unknowability of Truth and God is a belief as deepset in me as beliefs come, my entire life is pretty much dedicated to getting as near to the unknowable as I can, and living in accordance with it as much as I can. And the Bible tells me a fair amount both about how to get there (love your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and love thy neighbor as thyself), and how to sniff it out in other folks (by their fruits you shall know them).

I don't buy that the main message of the Gospels is "believe in Jesus and be saved." When someone actually asked Jesus about the most important thing, he quoted the verses I just did, about love. So that's what my Christianity is about- love. Not about my salvation, because that'd be a bit selfish of me. Love.

When I read that verse from John, I do reconcile it in my head. Here's how I do it:

Christ is, in fact, the way, the truth, and the life, and Christ is love. I truly don't think anyone can get to God except through love. I don't think that verse is commanding that we worship Jesus as Savior- I think it's commanding that we partake of the love of Christ. And as far as I can understand, there are a lots of ways to do that besides worshipping Jesus (and lots of people who worship Jesus that aren't following Christ at all . . . )

So that's my gloss for you. I even think it's a good gloss.

What I start to wonder is if I should be glossing at all. Not like everyone else isn't doing it. But in a way, when I use the Bible to justify a belief of mine, I'm being dishonest, because while the Bible informs many of beliefs and kicks me in the pants and reminds me to be honest and good and true, at the end of the day the Bible doesn't tell me what to believe; the still small voice does that. So I, and every bible-thumper in the country, can use the Bible to justify whatever beliefs I bloody well please, and I can make it sound all very nice and religious- 'of course I'm a good Christian! I believe in the Bible and everything!' when really I'm not sure if that's what the Bible is actually saying. I guess that's part of my lack of a handle on Truth.

And even then, I don't want to get caught in the trap of feeling that my beliefs must only come from the Bible . . . they don't, they never will, and I don't think they should. I'm a Quaker, blast it. Divine revelation is continually unfolding. What I want is a consistent view of the aggravating volume- some way to look at it that makes sense and helps me figure out when to gloss and when to not gloss and when to just ignore it. I have some nigglings in that direction, but nothing well fleshed-out.

And, argh, this is all part of the continual culture war inside of my head. The Quaker community here is wonderful and supportive and, like me, they view the Bible as inspired but not literal . . . but I often feel like I'm the only one agonizing over these things, because the other half of my faith community, in the form of my my dearly loved evangelical lowercase friends, do view the Bible as authoritative and I can't shrug off their influence . . . nor, I think, do I entirely want to. So here I am, groping towards a respectfully consistent view of the Bible. A Quaker view of the Bible, even. But I'm not there yet.

Intelligent Design

2006-02-25T09:40:00.000-08:00

Several months ago, Martin K. offered up a query. As Friends who believe Christ has come to teach us Himself, who believe in the direct intervention of the Spirit in everyday life, how should we approach the issue of Intelligent Design?

This question is of great personal import to me. I am an evolutionary biologist; I recently completed my Bachelor of Science at Marlboro College. My degree is in Biology with a focus on Biochemistry and Evolutionary Biology. Included in my Plan of Concentration (my undergraduate thesis) was a thirty page paper exploring the conflict between Creationism and Evolution (I posted the text of this paper on my other blog, if anyone wishes to read it). Immediately after completion of my Plan I needed to lay this issue down for a spell, but it's now been three weeks since completion and one week since a successful oral defense, and I'm eager to pick it up again- this time, not from my stance as an Evolutionary Biologist, but from my point of view as a Friend.

The phrase 'Intelligent Design' is often broadly used in religious circles to describe anyone who believes a deity had (or has) some role in the creation (and/or ongoing evolution) of life in the world. I rather suspect that the people who named their movement 'Intelligent Design' were trying to capitalize on this casual and inclusive usage, but I may be too hasty to judge.

At any rate, Intelligent Design in capital letters is more properly the name of the movement begun by Michael Behe. Behe argues, in essence, that there are some aspects of biochemical structure (the bacterial flagellum is one of his favorite examples) that are 'irreducably complex'; because their structure is so exquisitely interconnected, their evolution is impossible, and there must have been a designer. His specific arguments have been very thoroughly debunked by Kenneth Miller (as linked above; no need to go into detail here), but the basic structure of his argument is identical to the famous 18th century 'argument from design' promoted by William Paley; Paley analogized the complexity of life to walking across a moor and coming across a pocket watch. Just as the design of a watch implies a watchmaker, so does the design of life.

Both proponents of Intelligent Design and of more traditional seven-day creationism (and everyone on the middle) will very vehemently claim that their beliefs are nothing like each other. When I examine, however, this entire range of belief- from someone who believes the world was created in six days 6,000 years ago to someone who believes that the use of the word 'day' in Genesis could refer to millions of years but that God still created to someone adhering to Behe's Intelligent Design, I find common patterns of thought that lead me to lump all of these beliefs into one whole.

Principally,
1.) A supernatural entity is necessary for their view of the creation of the earth and the development of life on earth to make coherent sense,
and
2.) Their beliefs are in direct contradiction to standard scientific thought regarding evolution.

As a scientist, I cannot embrace any view falling into this category (explaining exactly why this is so would involve a detail discussion of the philosophy of science which I am not going to post here; it can be found in my linked paper).

At the same time, another pattern of thought that links all forms of creationism, from ID to six-day literalism, is the fact that all of these beliefs spring from a form of 'natural theology.'

The idea that religion and science should be in conflict at all is, to me, a rather bizarre idea. To many medieval thinkers, including St. Augustine (read The Literal Meaning of Genesis- it's wonderful), the Bible was inerrant but the teachings of science were also true, even if the two seemed on the surface to conflict; conflicts of that nature were products of our imperfect human understanding.

It was Thomas Aquinas who popularized Natural Theology- the attempt to give reasons or proofs of faith through science. Aquinas was arguing mainly for the literal nature of the transubstantiation; he thought that it could be proven somehow that wine DID change to blood. He lost that argument, but his school of thought still thrives.

I reject natural theology outright.

To me, faith should never be proven or disproven; that's what makes it faith. I've said this before, but even if it was proven to me that a three-headed hydra from the planet Ultron wrote the Bible, that wouldn't change a whit the truth I see in it.

I don't believe in Intelligent Design and its ilk because I DO see the proof of evolution all around me; I've spent four years and earned a degree examining just that. And science should be proven; that's what makes it science.

I believe that God had a hand in the creation of the world as a matter of faith. I believe in God illogically, unscientifically, and with all of my heart. God is God, and God can meddle in the affairs of this material world in any way that God wishes to. My God-given reason tells me that evolution has occured, and because I believe that using that reason to its fullest extent glorifies God, I accept it.

I cannot be a good scientist and argue that God was necessary to evolution; that is not what my reason says. However, how weak would my faith be if I couldn't see the hand of God even in the middle of something so apparently atheistic as evolution? My faith calls me to love my enemies, to see That of God in those I would ordinarily despise. It calls me to have enough faith to see God in even the most desperate situations- mudslides in Indonesia, hurricanes in Louisiana, slaughter in the middle east. I certainly don't despise evolution, but if we as people of faith can have the faith to love our enemies, and trust God in the middle of disaster, certainly we can have the faith to see God working mysteriously and elegantly through the midst of evolution- and I do.

Plain

2006-01-18T06:42:00.000-08:00

I had imagined my next post would be about Intelligent Design and my faith, but eh. This one has been bubbling around for a while.

For a long while- I really can't trace it back to its beginnings- I have felt nudged towards a plainness and simplicity of outward appearance. It's not always been religiously motivated, although at this point in my life it is. But I'm still not entirely sure what I want from it, or what it demands of me.

I initially accepted the nudge at the beginning of this summer. I started getting rid of all the clothing I owned that I almost never wore. Then I got rid of a few more things that I wore, but they were ostentatious. I got rid of all shirts with logos or designs or slogans, even political ones that I agreed with, or pretty designs that I was fond of (I had a tank top I loved with a red Welsh dragon on it . . . ). I got rid of all bright colors. Then I started getting rid of patterns except for subtle stripes and plaid. I got rid of six (SIX!) pairs of shoes and replaced them with one pair of well-built ones that will last. I took off all my jewelry (not much to begin with), put it in its box and put it away. By this time it wasn't summer, and I stopped wearing or got rid of my more revealing clothing.

I've kind of settled into a set of rules about what I'll wear. Nothing ostentatious, no bright colors or patterns, no jewelry, no makeup, no clothing that's above the knee or more than a handspan below the collarbone or very formfitting. As little bought new as possible; almost everything from secondhand stores. At this moment, I'm wearing a pair of Carhartts, a collarless cotton shirt, and a wool plaid overshirt, all in subdued earth tones and all procured secondhand for under $5.

Why am I doing it? Well, I feel led. I think our modern consumer culture is pretty awful, I think the exploitation of others to support America's consumer culture is pretty awful, I think the way women are put on display is pretty awful, and I want no part in it. I want no part in it, in some visible way that says, "Hey. I'm not playing these games." I've always had these convictions, even before my convincement, but my religious conviction is now the heartbeat that supports these beliefs.

The why of my plain practice generally bothers me less than another question- 'what am I looking to get out of this?' because the answer to that question is much more complex.

Honestly, in some part of me I long for a common Plain uniform. I'm sure I make some sort of statement as a woman with no makeup or jewelry in simple understated modest clothing all in drab colors and slightly outmoded styles. But in rural Vermont, it's honestly not that distinctive. Some part of me would love to be able to walk down the street and have people know, 'Oh, she's a plain-dressing Quaker.' A bigger part of me would like to be able to walk down the street and be able to recognize other plain-dressing Quakers, and have them recognize me.

I realize there's probably a simple answer to this. We could all (or I could) take up the dressing habits of the Mennonites, for instance, or the Amish. I could cover my head and give up pants, men could grow beards and wear lots of black. Or maybe I could do the Christian Modest Dress thing and wear lots of floral prints and jumpers. With a little veil.

So much of me recoils at this. First of all, I have no interest whatsoever in extreme anachronism. Even before my formal Plainness, I liked dressing in such a way that I wouldn't be out of place in almost any decade of this century (er, last century). A 1940's look is perfectly fine with me. A 1700's look strikes me as ostentatious in its own right, and outside of a very formal religious community, I'm just not interested. Historically, many Quakers have either 'plained' modern fashions or been a few years out of date. Somehow it seems that 'a few years out of date' hasn't kept up with the years among folks who want to dress Plain. And that just doesn't jive with the 'practical,' the 'simple,' and (above all) the inexpensive aspects of my Plainness.

Then there's my feminism, and my queer-positive beliefs. Heck, I go to workshops on gender diversity. I don't believe in a binary sexuality, I don't believe in binary gender, and I myself have just a streak of gender-queer in me. I figure, if God hadn't wanted me to be a tomboy, well, God wouldn't have made me one.

The strict gender roles that seem to go with so much 'modest dress' these days just terrify me. Some of the websites selling 'plain' clothing literally give me frissions of horror up my spine. I hate being referred to as a 'lady.' I am not interested in expressing my 'femininity,' or in 'learning how to lead a more feminine life,' or even 'expressing my femininity for the glory of God.' I'm interested in learning express my humanity for the glory of God. I'm going to medical school, not charm school. I would like to get married and have children some day, but that's a preference, not my life's calling. If I do get married, it will be a partnership of equals.

I'm not sure where to go from here. I'm looking for something a little more distinctive, but not intensely gendered or terribly anachronistic. And I'd like to keep my motives pure.

Hmmmm.

Quakers Taking God Seriously

2005-12-13T06:33:00.000-08:00

I have been quiet recently because I am in the end stages of finishing my 100+ page undergraduate thesis on the evolution of insecticide resistance. One 40-50 page review paper on the toxicology of various insecticides, as well as methods for handling pests without insecticides. One 40-50 page review paper about the various ways insects evolve resistance to evolution, the paralells we can draw between this and greater evolutionary theory, and the implications this all has for modern agriculture, which I criticize and suggest replacements for. One 3 page, theoretically publishable, research paper summarizing research I performed over the summer on insect evolution. And, finally, one 30-40 page paper discussing the controversy between creationism and evolution in America. I really can't complain; I designed this entirely myself, from exactly what I would be studying to exactly what papers I would write and how long they would be. I love my college. (The paginations are really just estimates of how it will look when it's done; I'm not held to anything)

I'm just a few weeks from finishing. Obviously this is devouring much of my time, focus, and attention.

I'll get to a point about Quakerism in a moment, I promise!

So in pursuit of writing that perfect final paper, I've been discussing creationism and evolution a fair amount with quite a number of folks. Last week, one of my faculty advisors mentioned to me that he was going to visit a class being taught by two other professors on 'The Search for the Scientific Method.' Apparently they had been discussing the book 'Darwin on Trial' written by Phillip Johnson, a law professor at Berekely and an ardent creationist. Todd was going to show up so that the students could ask a biologist for his perspective (one of the teachers of this course was a philosopher; the other was a physicist).

I asked whether I could tag along. My paper, you know! No one had a problem with this (no one generally does at my college), so I showed up at the class and listened, occasionally chiming in. The discussion was relatively interesting, if not exactly what I was writing about, and I enjoyed myself. During the class I mentioned that I was writing this paper, and after class I found myself caught up in a conversation with Travis and Neil (physics and philosophy professors, respectively) about it. We discussed various aspects of the scientific method, the mindset behind creationism, and my belief that there is no conflict between science and religion.

At one point Neil (a religious man) said something along the lines of (this is far from verbatim, forgive me), "Well, you say that science and religion cover two different topics, but I feel like often saying that is used by science to degrade what religion has to offer. Scientists say, 'Well, they're two different things . . . and science is the ONLY VALID ONE!"

I said, "Neil . . . I'm religious." He looked at me and asked me what sort of religious. I told him I was a Quaker. We then got into another, much briefer discussion about God and the problem of evil (at this point Travis wandered away). We started wandering out of the academic building and down the hill towards the dining hall together, still chatting about God and evil, and then he said something that stopped me in my tracks.

"You know, Sarah," he said, "I'm really surprised to find a Quaker who takes God seriously." My mouth dropped open. "I always thought of the Quakers as a very good, very moral people," he continued, "but I never thought they had much of a deep spirituality."

Well, I didn't quite know what to say for a moment. I wasn't going to say, "Gee, Neil, sometimes I feel like that too, but there are all of these cool bloggers . . . " Instead I started talking about Tom Fox, and the Christian Peacemaker Teams, and the incredibly strength of faith it takes to offer yourself up for your beliefs like that. If Tom Fox isn't an example of a Quaker taking God seriously . . . I don't know who is (heh, right after hearing about the CPT kidnappings my first impulse was to run out and join them . . . but I think God told me that I'm called to finish my thesis FIRST).

I kinda got to thinking. I'd been thinking about Amanda's post trying to define Quakerism, and I'd been thinking about something I'd heard at the very first Meeting I went to at the place that is my Meetinghouse now. And I'd been trying to define Quakerism myself. I hang out with a bunch of evangelical Christians, and I get asked a lot of questions.

What I finally told my confused evangelical friends a week or so back was that Quakerism is Christianity entirely stripped down. We got rid of the structure, we got rid of the preachers, we got rid of the churches, we got rid of most of the theology except for the intense connection betwen I and Thou. We even got rid of a lot of societal complexities- and I used plain speech as an example.

The problem is, I sometimes think our lack of ritual can become a custom in and of itself. If I were summoned to court and asked to take an oath, would my refusal to do so (because I would refuse) be coming from my deepest convictions, or from an irrelevant adherence to an old tenet that has little worth except in its ability to make me Feel Like a Quaker? On the flip side of things, me and my housemates are lighting candles every Sunday for Advent. Quaker custom says that such customs are unnecessary, but my love for the custom draws me to do it anyway. Is such a rejection of the formalism of a Quaker custom more Quakerly, or less Quakerly?

The thing that woman at my first Meeting was this: There are some doughnut Quakers. Quakers who have remembered all the peripherals, like to write their senators against the war and to wear birkenstocks (sometimes I think this is a Quaker advice!) and to volunteer at first day school . . . and have lost the spiritual core.

I wonder how one guards against that, for I could see myself slipping too easily into the comfort of Quaker tradition. I wear drab clothes from the thrift store and don't swear oaths and think the Bible is an open document, so I must be a good Quaker! God spare me.

At the same time, there is certainly a huge amount of value in, say, my Yearly Meeting's Faith and Practice. If there weren't, I wouldn't consider myself a Quaker. If it were just the faith that were important, I'd run off and join the Unitarians, or maybe my evangelical friends, depending on how Jesusy I was feeling that day. I don't want to be a doughnut Quaker, but I don't want to be a Munchkin (that bit of dough from the middle of a doughnut, for all you folks living outside the marketing sphere of Dunkin Donuts), either.

A lot has touched me and struck me about this situation with the CPT hostages in Iraq. I have been moved deeply by it. I think one of the things I'll be carrying away with me long after this is resolved, one way or another, is that Tom Fox is an example of the sort of person who is balancing both.

Anyway. I, like most other folks, am praying for the safety of all four of them.

Back to That Christianity Problem . . .

2005-11-09T18:53:00.000-08:00

I came to a rather odd and somewhat painful realization about myself not too long ago.

I think I lack the capacity for belief.

This is the only truly positive belief I have about religion: there is a God. That's about as far as I can go. But I'm the sort of person who needs a structure to their faith. It doesn't work for me to just go around believing in God. I need a faith tradition. I need a practice. More than anything else, Christianity works for me. I have the objectiveness of mind necessary to realize that this is probably only because that's how I was raised. If I were raised Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or Pagan, I would feel much the same way. But as it is, Christianity has an incredibly powerful resonance for me that nothing else comes close to matching. I know this experimentally, believe me; I've tried a number of other things. This paradigm is how I can make my life make sense.

But still I don't believe.

I think the Bible is true in what my friend calls "the Tim O'Brian sort of way." I use the Hamlet metaphor a lot. I like Hamlet. I don't think any of the events in it ever occured. But I think it's a true story, in all the ways that count for a story. Same with the Bible. I find it true, and yet . . . Euph. I find the Bible true enough that I am willing to shape my life around its truth. And yet. The actual rising from the dead bit? Euph. I can go so far as to say that I don't know. I can suspend disbelief. But active belief in the virgin birth and the resurrection and the whole nine yards? I don't think I'm capable of it. I'm not capable of it. Part of my problem is, I see the truth in planes. There's a plane of spiritual truth, and of emotional truth, and of material, down-to-earth truth. I believe in the Resurrection on every plane but the last one. This is also why I see no conflict whatsoever between the Bible and science. The Bible is true on one plane. Science is true on another.

(Actually, I have the same problem with/in science, except in science this way of thinking is accepted and has a name. You can be a scientific realist or an instrumentalist. A scientific realist thinks that the world really IS as explained by science. There are electrons, and magnetic fields. They exist. An instrumentalist thinks they may or may not exist, but that they are useful ways to describe the world, and so acts as if they exist. More or less. Guess which one I am. At least I get to be just as good of a scientist either way . . . )

And on some level, it doesn't matter to me. It honestly doesn't matter to me whether God wrote the bible or men wrote the Bible or a three-headed hydra from the planet Ultron wrote the Bible. It's just as true either way. And it equally doesn't matter to me whether Jesus the physical guy was actually the Son of God and actually performed miracles and actually, physically rose from the dead. It's just as true to me either way. Just like electrons are true, whether or not they actually exist. Though, honestly, I find electrons a lot easier to accept than the resurrection of Christ.

But at the same time . . . I wonder if it matters that I don't think it matters. It concerns me that I don't have any emotional or intuitive sense of this thing mattering, when to everyone else I have ever met or talked to on the subject, it matters very much indeed. Is there something wrong with me? Am I crazy? SHOULD it matter to me? Does it make my life a lie, living something I am Just Not Sure about?

It makes me a little uncomfortable to be walking the line like this. I feel like I should make up my mind, one way or another, Christian or Heathen, none of this middle ground. Everyone else seems to have it figured out. Eh. Part of me wants to think that my faith is that much stronger for being willing to follow something that I'm not entirely sure is true. And why is that material-plane part of it so important? It's not important in science . . . I lack understanding. Gah.

Unfortunately, walking the middle ground is more or less a theme of how I live my life. I just can't figure it out. I wish I could think in black and white, but this has always been my greatest gift and my greatest curse: I can always see the other side of the story. No matter how abhorrent a person's views are to me, I can always stand in their shoes and say, "I can see where you're coming from." I can't deny the truth I see in all other religious traditions. Believing in the material, actual Resurrection and etc. seems connected to that somehow. I feel as if, if I make myself believe it somehow, I will have lost something essential in my point of view.

Again: does it even matter?

I am grateful to have a spiritual home here among Friends. Through all my doubts and fears and "dear-God-WHY-do-I-even-bothers," I feel like there's room for me here, in all my imperfections and wafflings. I know of few other faith traditions that are happy to have me express myself in the Christian metaphor, using all the Christ-talk that resonates with me, and yet still let me just inherently not know. This is a relief. If I decided I was going to go Accept Jesus As My Personal Saviour (I hope not- on principle it's a nice idea, but, URGH, the connotations make me want to run away screaming), there would be room for me. If I decided I wasn't sure about God any more (again, I sincerely hope not), there would be room for me.

I hope.

There is, isn't there?

The Nature of Sin

2005-10-30T06:00:00.000-08:00

Well, daylight savings time just ended, which means . . . I suddenly have an extra hour to blog!

The idea of sin has been dancing around and around my head. I recently escaped from a truly horrible relationship. As I was leaving it, I found myself, time and again, doing things which I couldn't stand myself for. Not only that, but I was doing things which didn't seem to be like me, in the slightest. As soon as I was clear enough of this relationship, I looked back and realized that for the whole two and a half years of it, I had been doing this. I had been losing myself. It was only when I was partially free enough to realize it that I saw what I was doing, and was convicted of it.

Now this got me thinking on the nature of sin. Thomas Merton talks a lot about the self, and identity in God. One of his essays is called "Things In Their Identity." He says that (for example) an oak tree is always an oak tree. It is exactly what God intended it to be. It is fully itself, and can never be anything else. In the Islamic tradition, this is called an 'involuntary Muslim'. Muslim means 'submission' (which I find incredibly beautiful, by the way). A tree can not choose, therefore it is an 'involuntary Muslim'. Therefore its existence glorifies God.

Humans, on the other hand, can choose either to be themselves, or not. When we are not ourselves truly, we are not following God. At the same time (and CS Lewis talked about this as well, in the one chapter of Mere Christianity that I LIKED as opposed to the ones that made me want to hurl the book across the room), it is only in God that one can actually find or be oneself. It all ties together. Sin as turning away from God and our true selves.

At the same time, I was thinking on the nature of children, and the particular joy I feel in the last few minutes of meeting as they come in. This week in meeting I felt called to speak, and I mentioned the above, about being an involuntary Muslim . . . or not. And I also realized, and mentioned, that we are called to be child-like in our faith. And the reason for this, I believe, is that children are the best or perhaps the only human example of sinlessness. They cannot yet choose to be other than they are. This is why the children inspire me so, and why we are called to their perfection.

Speaking of being called to perfection, is it not that we are also called to a Christ-like perfection?

I know I am not an orthodox Christian by any means, and when I think of Christ I don't think of Jesus the man, I think of a state of being. We are called to become ourselves in Christ. Perhaps Jesus was the only adult man who walked on earth who ever attained this state of perfection, of being wholly himself. Trees do it and children do it, because they are incapable of not doing it. To be fully ourselves as an adult human . . . this is the nature of the child-like, Christ-like perfection we are called to. And it's not easy.

So this is what I got out of my relationship. I don't think it was specifically my 'fornication' (for instance) that was my sin. It was my turning away from God, in not being fully myself. It was in how the boundaries and deliminations of that relationship turned me into Other than what I should be.

Now, I was brought up Catholic. Being brought up Catholic, one is inclined to think about sin in terms of specific rules that one can infract. You break the rule (sex, for instance), it's a spot on your soul, it needs to be wiped away.

Interestingly, the Eastern Orthodox (and Jewish) tradition doesn't see sin like this. Sin's not about the specific rules at all, although they exist. It's any behavior which 'misses the mark,' meaning: draws the person in question farther away from God ('missing the mark' is how the word 'sin' is translated in the original Greek). It's not then that one needs to wipe the sin away. God already does that, unconditionally, because God loves us when we cannot love or forgive ourselves. It is that one needs to find the path again. Back to one's true self, and back to God.

As a brief coda to this post, these thoughts also led me to thoughts about forgiveness.

There have been few people in my life that I have been truly furious with, and needed to forgive (and by forgive I don't mean 'let the matter slide.' I mean the utter forgiveness in which one lets go of any need for apology or repayment). One of these was a person who brutally hurt my closest friend. I simply could not forgive her, for quite some time. I carried this grudge in my heart and could not let it go. It was only when I came to the full realization of my own sin and my own failing that I was capable of forgiving her. And this made me think that perhaps this realization of our sin is the core of humility, and that humility is entirely necessary for the act of forgiveness, or forgiveness becomes merely self-righteousness. I freely admit that pride is by far my greatest failing. I have so much pride. It is good for me to be reminded in this way to let go of my pride, and forgive.

Now if only I could forgive myself . . .

Why I Am Not A Christian?

2005-10-04T19:42:00.000-07:00

I don't call myself a Christian. In casual conversation, I tell people I am a Quaker, because this at least is true. If pressed, I will say that I am a pluralistic but still Christocentric Hicksite Quaker, and if that's not specific enough we have a long talk coming.

But I'm not sure where the truth in all this lies, or whether I have the right of it. My dearest friend is a Christian, in the Jesus Saves sort of way. I don't mean that badly at all: he lives out his faith with more love than I have ever witnessed before. We have long discussions about faith, and one of the points that it often comes down to is this: he doesn't believe that I am Christian.

Here is what I say about myself: I attempt to center my life around my faith. I don't believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful, Creator-God, but I believe in Something. I believe in a very certain Something. I believe that there are many ways to get at Something (I'm getting a little tired of the 'many roads to the top of the mountain' metaphor, but it gets the point across), but I also believe that spiritual dabbling will not work for me, or just about anyone, likely. I am going to choose one path and stick to it with all my heart.

I was raised Catholic, in that altar-server, I-want-to-be-a-nun sort of way. I've more or less always believed in a God of some sort or another. The metaphors and teachings of Christianity resonate very powerfully with me. I don't believe that they're universally true. I don't believe my atheist friends are going to hell. I don't believe that Jesus the man was the literal son of God. I do believe in Christ. I believe in Christ as the light that illuminates every man's soul. Christ as a state of being. Christ as a metaphor. I read the letters of Paul and am powerfully moved by his exhortations to us to become more, companions in Christ, to circumcise our hearts. I am constantly struggling to circumcise my heart. I am struggling to let go of my own will and be subsumed by God's (unfortunately, I get in the way far too often). If it wasn't so bloody creepy to say, "Christ is the center of my life!" I might do it.

But is this Christian?

My friend argues otherwise. He points out that a Christian is a follower of Christ, and that description does not fit me. I ignore plenty of things that Jesus said, like the bits about no man coming to the Father except through him, and the bits about Scripture being the word of God, and the bits about listen to the people I send (I like Paul's letters, but I throw his misogyny out the window). And I most assuredly do not subscribe to the 'Jesus is my personal Savior' bit. I don't even believe in Jesus as God. Christ, not Jesus. He says this is like kind of obeying the speed limit, or mostly not going over the double yellow lines in the road, or being a little pregnant. Either you are, or you aren't. Only 100% obedience counts.

On the other hand, isn't making oneself a living oblation 100% obedience? And why should it have to be 100% to begin with? And who came up with these rules? And why do I get so upset over it all? I don't even call myself a Christian.

And that brings me to the third hand. Even if the shoe fits, how could I bear to put it on? I want nothing less than to be associated with the sort of bigotry that seems to predominate among public Christians in this country, and maybe everywhere. I more than enthusiastically support the queer community in their struggle for equality. I subscribe to the Hilary Clinton school of thought when it comes to abortion- let's keep it safe, legal, and rare. I am an evolutionary biologist. I think school-sanctioned prayer in public schools is wrong. I am firmly in favor of the separation of church and state. Perhaps, though, this is exactly why I should embrace the label. Religion should be co-opted no more. (Did anyone else read the August Harper's?)

Then again . . . I have nothing but respect for the sort of Christian who practices what they preach. I know a number of rather fundamentalist Christians, and if I called them at two in the morning because my car was broken down fifty miles away, they would come pick me up in a heartbeart. And they have told me very firmly that it is offensive to the Real Christians (capitals mine) for someone like me, a poser, if you will, to call themselves such. And I wish to respect this.

How many hands are we on now? Five? Then again, I don't think they have a handle on the truth.

I've run this track around in my mind too many times to count. What it tends to come down to is this: I know what I believe. I am quite clear about these basic outlines, though the details are constantly being shifted and changed by the Light. Is the name so important? Perhaps I shall let my friends and companions argue over why I am or am not a Christian, and go my quiet way in peace.

I hope that's not a cop-out. I wish the way was clear.

2005-09-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

I'm not entirely sure how to start this blog. I've been waiting more or less endlessly to feel inspired towards some eloquent, Spirit-infused first post, and the longer I wait the more sure I am that I just need to get this underway, and the Spirit will find me eventually.

It's funny: blogging seems to me such an intrinsically self-centered act. Here I am! My life! Look at it! and at the same time, what inspired me to start this blog was my drive to discuss something intrinsically self-negating: my spiritual efforts/journey/obsession with Quakerism. Hmmph. Perhaps the resolution to the paradox is this: on some level I am not trying to say, "Here I am, look at me," but instead am saying, "Here is God." Only on some level, though. I am fully guilty of navel-gazing.

I'm not sure if I have much more to say at the moment. I imagine I shall be able to follow up with a more introductory-type post, and then perhaps with a few witty epistles full of spiritual nuggets. Er, then again, maybe not.

At any rate, I hope this counts as 'making a start.' I'm certainly trying.