You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Art Newlin rose in Meeting and told of driving two- or twelve-hitch rigs as a young man. Once he hitched two strawberry roans to a tongue, and while they’d worked a rig before, they’d always followed and never really felt the bit or anything. Nonetheless, they performed well, even backing on command. Only later did he realize the risk he’d taken. “They could’ve become runaways. They could’ve killed me.”
He credited faith for protecting him.
One example: Snakes have no vocal cords! (So how’d he talk to Eve? Is this meant to be a joke? Or was his voice taken away afterward in punishment? If so, why weren’t Eve and Adam made deaf?)
By the way, the Serpent is one Biblical character who will likely always remain “male.”
Why are you looking down?
Allow me to restate my argument that religion is important, along with a confession that in too many ways, at too many times, its proponents have betrayed its radical promise and its progressive direction, whatever their professed faith.
At its best, religion gives us individually and collectively a place to examine our hopes, dreams, and possibilities of a healthier, more justful, and more harmonious world. In short, moral and ethical guidelines. It can also provide the necessary foundation of community for pursuing and nurturing that goal.
Some of the sharpest critics of its practice at worst are prophets found in the Bible.
To see some examples of how that worked within the Quaker movement, visit my blog, As Light Is Sown.
I’ve previously posted on the Quaker tradition of recording memorial minutes for “public Friends,” meaning those whose service extended beyond their local Meeting.
I have even posted some of those as examples.
As I’ve noted, a memorial minute differs from either an obituary or a eulogy. Its intent is to recognize ways the Divine has found service through the individual’s faithfulness.
After the minute is approved by the local Meeting, it is forwarded to the Quarterly Meeting, essentially a district of neighboring Quakers, and once endorsed there, sent on to the Yearly Meeting, where it may be included in a collection of similar minutes.
Here’s the draft for Charlotte Fardelmann, 1928-2023.
~*~
Deeply grounded in her faith of God and angels, Charlotte Fardelmann heeded spiritual nudges that bubbled up within her, an inner life we glimpsed in her warm smile and sparkling eyes, especially when accompanied by lively hand motions as she voiced a holy leading.
Many fondly remember her hospitality at her pink home on Little Harbor in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the scene of Meeting picnics, multiday silence retreats, or more mundane committee deliberations. From childhood on, she loved the water and wordlessly shared with us her sense of its wonder and renewal.
A quiet, gentle, self-effacing manner accompanied her nurturing presence amidst us, opening her to listen closely and actively in private conversations.
Raised in a family with two brothers in Minneapolis that enjoyed sailing in international waters, Charlotte experienced the privileges and discomforts of wealth. She did, for instance, sail her father’s 32-foot sloop around the Baltic Sea and later around Greece.
In college, Charlotte underwent a religious awakening, along with service in inner city neighborhoods of major cities, to the consternation of her agnostic father. She also took a spring break on Nantucket Island, where she was part of a circle from Wellesley who met a group of men from Yale who had access to a sailboat. With its occupancy limited, they decided to draw straws on who could go, and Charlotte’s led to Dale Fardelmann, who shared a sailing passion.
Charlotte and Dale married and had four children in Hanover, New Hampshire, while he served his medical residency. By the time they moved to Portsmouth, where he established a urology practice, she was worshipping as an Episcopalian, a faith shared with her mother-in-law.
Her family had experienced mental illness and other dark struggles, which she would continue to address.
In the adversity of divorce, she discovered an opportunity to be something more than a devoted mother and a supportive housewife. With her four children raised and headed in separate directions, she found liberation to pursue new interests, including professional photography and writing that led to her published books “Islands Down East: A Visitor’s Guide”; “Illuminations: Holding Our Life Stories Up to the Light”; “Sink Down to the Seed”; “Nudged by the Spirit: Stories of People Responding to the Still, Small Voice, of God”; and “Create in Me a Clean Heart.” Her freelancing appearances included a Boston Globe story that fronted its Sunday travel section, “Mom, You’re Not Hiking That Alone, Are You,” her account of backpacking the New Hampshire Presidential Range of mountains solo.
In the midst of the Vietnam conflict, she searched for a faith community that pursued peace rather than military programs and that functioned free of an implicit patriarchy. Peace and women’s rights mattered deeply to her. Ultimately, that brought her to Dover Friends Meeting.
A decade later, she undertook a nine-month residency at Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat and studies center near Philadelphia, to deepen her spiritual focus. It was a life-changing experience. After returning to Portsmouth, though she was reluctant to appear as a public speaker, she created a photographic slide show about the center and presented it to Quakers around New England. That step opened other opportunities for her to share her spiritual insights, in addition to classes she taught at Pendle Hill itself. She also established ongoing close relationships of mutual spiritual support, including a prayer partner she spoke monthly for forty years. In her prayers, her style was boldly specific.
She served Dover Friends Meeting as a sensitive presiding clerk, as well as through many other positions, including its longstanding representative to the Ministry and Counsel committee of New England Yearly Meeting. She presented many workshops during its annual sessions over the years.
One of her practices was to set aside a day each week to listen to God. She nurtured a childlike delight in life, likely a response to the dark night journey of the soul she also knew.
A central discipline was journaling, often involving black ink or color sketching rather than words, as well as a midday gathering at Dover where all were free to similarly engage and share with the others, if so moved.
Add to that her delight in music, including participation in a 200-member women’s chorus in Portsmouth, Voices of the Heart.
Frugal and self-effacing, her one indulgence was travel, which included participation in Servas, a program that had her staying in homes around the world in exchange for welcoming those families to her home in Portsmouth. Other travel connections included her experiencing the Eastern Orthodox midnight celebration of Easter in the then Soviet Union, with its congregational exclamations, “He is risen! Truly, He is risen!,” a resonance that moved her deeply. She also went to Central America as a witness for peace during the Iran-Contra conflict, putting herself at physical risk, and to Hiroshima, Japan, among her other appearances on behalf of global peace. Additional trips took her to Friends in Cuba and Kenya, prompting Dover Friends to support a unique AIDS orphan.
She was not immune to tragedy and endured the loss of a beloved grandson and then, in roughly a year-and-a-half span, the deaths of both of her daughters and a cherished son-in-law.
The fortune she inherited came with her father’s instruction, “Keep it in the family,” meaning its principal, placing it in tension with many needs she saw in the world around her. With counsel from several other Friends from similar backgrounds, Charlotte found resolution in redefining family itself and, with the approval of her brothers and children, established the Lyman Fund to assist individuals and groups in following their unique spiritual leadings by helping them overcome financial obstacles in taking their next step. Carrying her maiden name, the fund had granted more than a million dollars to some 800 recipients by the time of her passing and is poised to continue its mission.
I rather backed into this project, beginning with the elusive question, “What do Quakers believe?”
It led me to something much bigger, ranging beyond the Society of Friends, but springing from the seemingly quaint language of its earliest voices in mid-1600s Britain. There are good reasons the time and place are referred to as the world turned upside down.
Centering their experiences in three interlocking metaphors – Light, Seed, and Truth – they created what’s been called an alternative Christianity, and though their thinking and process have been diluted over the centuries since, their foundation remains revolutionary, startling, and challenging. I’ll argue that it’s cutting-edge contemporary, as well, in a time of disbelief and skepticism.
For one thing, how do you see “truth” as a verb? It becomes something quite different from carved marble or courtroom proceedings.
While some of the chapters originally appeared as chapbooks at Thistle Finch editions, this newly enlarged volume of essays is now available on your choice of ebook platforms at Smashwords.com and its affiliated digital retailers. Those outlets include the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, and Sony’s Kobo. You may also request the ebook from your local public library.
The book now ranges far beyond religion and spirituality, by the way. Even atheists have their beliefs. Change the perspective, as I think I do, and you can find the exchange of first-hand experiences refreshing. How else can we talk about the deepest issues in life?
The move unites the essays in a single volume, rather than a series of four smaller chapbooks, and makes them available to a wider range of readers worldwide.
Do take a look.
Quakers advise living in simplicity, but it can be complicated.
For example, how do we feel about heated car seats?
Especially if the car already came equipped with them?
And, for extra points, was purchased used?
As another example, how about eating fresh scallops in season? Sure, they’re expensive but also so heavenly. Cooked at home, a dinner can be priced out around the cost of a meal at McDonald’s these days and will likely be healthier. The morsels are also so simple to cook, if you’re paying attention.
If you’ve worked through the Money Talks exercises on my Chicken Farmer blog, you know I’m a believer in simple luxuries, things my frugal wife labels as Quality of Life improvements. These can be as simple as a great cup of coffee savored in the morning, rather than a full pot gulped habitually. Or a fine sweater purchased at a yard sale that still gets compliments a dozen years later.
Looking closely also points to many conflicts we see as First World problems, things that upset spoiled Americans and Europeans and the rich in other realms but are utterly beyond the reach of most of the world’s people. You know, even having a car.
Those could prompt a Tendrils here at the Red Barn, but I’m passing for now. I mean, some folks are upset having to eat leftovers while the majority of the global populace is going hungry.
My most recent round with this arose over the funeral arrangements for someone who was not exactly in our family but still being handled by one of us rather than one of hers. As I was saying about complications?
Without getting into the details, I can say that hers, shaped by family and friends’ expectations, easily cost many times more than a Quaker burial would have – and the memorial service itself would have been free and far more personable.
When I go, I definitely want any earthly wealth to go to my family and worthy endeavors than being poured into the ground. OK?
Now, back to those car seats. How do we feel about air-conditioning in the car?
As a small, rural Quaker fellowship, we’re especially happy to be worshipping together in one space every Sunday again, at least through the summer and early autumn.
Covid, of course, had us connected only by Zoom through much of the Covid onslaught and after that, coming together in a physical space on alternative weeks only. We do live at distances from the meetinghouse, so winter weather can often be a challenge.
Not so summer. We’d love to have others join us in our hour of mostly silent centering, beginning at 9:30 on Sunday mornings. The meetinghouse is in the woods along Maine Route 189 in Whiting – on the way to Lubec and many great outdoors trails.
If you meditate in some practice, you’ll fit right in – and if that seems foreign, it’s still a great time for personal reflection. I always find it renewing.
Do you read ebooks? If so, here’s an offer you really can’t pass up.
For the month of July, the digital version of my history Quaking Dover is being offered for free at Smashword.com’s annual summer sale.
The paperback edition has been selling very nicely, thank you, but I do want to share the excitement during the city’s 400th anniversary and, well, here’s one more opportunity to get in on the story. Yes, little Dover is older than Boston, New York, or, well, any other city along the northeast coast other than Plymouth and Weymouth, Massachusetts. (Bet you didn’t know that!)
For details on obtaining this limited-time offer, go to the Jnana Hodson page at Smashwords.com.
It really is quite a tale.
I didn’t make these points this baldly in my book Quaking Dover, but as I’ve prepared for my upcoming presentation from West Falmouth Friends’ Peace and Social Order committee’s Zoom presentation, I’m seeing these elements at play.
I do hope you can join us online for this free presentation on Sunday, July 9, at 12:30 pm. Please not that preregistration is required at https://bit.ly/QuakingDover.
You don’t have to be a Quaker to participate, either. (Insert smiley face emoji if you must.)
Just how do peaceable communities emerge and survive?
Frankly, I hadn’t thought about this side of my history Quaking Dover until I was invited to do a Zoom presentation. But the elements are all in the story as I recorded them.
(This is one more example of where readers’ insights are important to authors.)
Here’s hoping you can join me virtually from Cape Cod on Sunday, July 9. Do note that preregistration for the free event is required.
Jnana's Red Barn 