Category: Quaker Practice

CARPE DIEM

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Among the historic divisions among Friends, none were more traumatic than the Hicksite-Orthodox separations, 1826-27. While New England and North Carolina were spared, most other American yearly meetings were torn in two. The reasons were deep and complicated – often along socio-economic and geographic lines. Subsistence versus commercial farming, artistan-craftsmen versus industrialists, rural versus urban, traditional versus forward-looking, tensions between having the polity of Friends lodged within the monthly meeting or at the yearly meeting level, even language itself, one holding to old expressions versus those wanting to embrace a new evangelical ecumenism.

We were not alone. The Puritan legacy, for instance, splintered into Congregationalists and Unitarians about the same time we Quakers split, theirs ostensibly over naming the president to head, first, Dartmouth College and then Harvard. The Dunkers (or German Baptist Brethren), meanwhile, managed to hold together, although their tensions would finally reappear in the 1880s, leading to a five-way split, producing the Church of the Brethren – about the same time many Friends began turning to pastor-led programmed worship. Curiously, the Brethren, laboring under a single yearly meeting, faced major tensions between the Eastern, old-fashioned members and the “Western” (west of the Appalachian Mountains) progressives – the same lineup that Friends would see in the quietist versus pastoral worship styles, with our Western Yearly Meetings going programmed and the Eastern ones largely holding to tradition.

These tensions were fueled by and reflected in many larger societal issues. In politics, the Jacksonians reflected the emergence of westward expansion. In religion, the Great Awakening first blazed through New England (sometimes as the New Lights movement) before igniting in Kentucky and the newly settled regions. In the economy, the industrial revolution was well under way.

For Quakers, the divisions essentially shut down the itinerant ministry from traveling Friends, which had kept the central messages of the faith and practice intact. That loss no doubt played into the emergence of the pastoral system in places where Friends were settling, rather than long settled. Another loss was a breakdown in the sharing of epistles and other written material. We no longer had a common vision to express or unite behind.

I reflect on these not so much as history but as a recognition that our larger society is in one of those watershed transitions – as our presentations and discussions on envisioning the future have suggested. How do we parlay what’s been entrusted to us into the future? Will Friends, as a whole, respond with radically new worship, organization, expression? Will we be sufficiently open to be led where we are needed? Of course, Israel under Roman occupation turned out to be another of those watershed moments, spreading both Judaism and the newly emerging Christianity across the empire. But that’s a much larger and more complicated story, except for the fact that we’re Friends as a consequence.

Or, as old Quakers would say, “Christ is come and coming.” It’s more than “Season’s Greetings,” after all.

ONE CHANGE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

Daily encounters are full of times I fall short of the Quaker / Christian ideal. At least I see others in Meeting who do much better on this front.

One way the faith has changed me, though, is in teaching me when to sit on a problem, rather than force a solution (as long as this isn’t mere avoidance, which is a different situation). As the saying goes, “Some of the best barns in Rhode Island were designed in Quaker Meeting.” (Yes, Silas Weeks liked to enlarge it to “New England.”) Maybe you know the postcard:

NOTICE, I AM A QUAKER.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY,
PLEASE BE QUIET.

I think it’s part of the process we see extending to our decision-making as a faith community, and how much it’s lacking when we’re engaged in a business session elsewhere. The divisiveness, egotism, us-versus-them mentality that so often prevails, the rush to judgment, the name-calling or the boss calling the shots, and so on. The desire to appear decisive or in command. You know all the symptoms.

On the other hand, some of the best headlines I’ve written have been by taking a break when I was stuck – by stepping aside to walk down the hall or to the bathroom. Release the problem, for a minute or two break. And then the answer appears. No need to feel guilty, is there? A little quiet, and voila, originality or productivity, as they would say. A barn or a headline, all in the job, as we Friends know, all the same.

NAMING TODAY’S FORBIDDEN FRUIT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

As I contend in my latest book release at Thistle/Flinch editions, the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden goes much deeper than the traditional children’s telling or, for that matter, the conventional interpretation that focuses on disobedience and a teaching imposed much later, the one known as Original Sin.

The surprisingly short Creation story – the second one in the Bible, actually – is one of those texts that just won’t let go of me, and the new layers of understanding just keep on surfacing.

The other morning I was struck by a consideration of what the Forbidden Fruit might be in our own time. Nowadays we could consider things like global warming (more accurately, climatic instability), overpopulation, or nuclear arms proliferation, just for starters – things caused by our own curiosity and consumption, one way or another. Each bears an ultimate warning, “and you are not to touch it, lest you die.” Each one is a negative consequence of advances that seemed good at the time they were introduced.

So here we are, in a situation very much like Adam and Eve in the aftermath, looking for direction and restored balance.

For my earlier musings on the original text, take a look at Eden Embraced. I’d say it really is all about the timeless human condition.

KEY WORDS OF FAITH TO CONSIDER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

A new Pendle Hill pamphlet, Robert Griswold’s Marking the Quaker Path: Seven Key Words Plus One, has sparked some fresh thinking on my end.

I’ve previously posted on the ongoing series from the press at the Quaker retreat and study center in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, and often advise newcomers to Meeting to peruse its display rack in our library for titles that might best touch their interests, whether theological, historical, peace and social justice action, or simple daily living.

What I like about Griswold’s volume is the way he identifies some basic terms that are also found in other religious traditions while noting ways we Friends have come to apply our own unique understandings.

I’m sensing that each of his eight words (OK, one is a phrase) would be a fertile topic for group discussion, and not just among Friends.

His list:

  • Condition
  • Experience
  • Covenant
  • Discipline
  • Discernment
  • Authority
  • The Beloved Community
  • Submission

~*~

I won’t try to define them here, but each one can be stimulating, even controversial, as we look at the fullness of their implications in contemporary life. It’s also instructive to think of words he hasn’t focused on, starting with Belief, Worship, Prayer, and the like.

To learn more about his pamphlet and more, visit the Pendle Hill website.

RANTERS, THEN AND NOW

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of the most remarkable periods in world history came in mid-1600s Britain, an outbreak that included the execution of the monarch by commoners (rather than a rival for the throne) amid a host of social, economic, and political upheaval. For an overview of the ferment, you can read Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down or Antonia Fraser’s Cromwell, Our Chief Among Men.

My primary interest, of course, focuses on the rise of the Quaker movement out of the waves of conflict – with the rise of a two-party political system and a loyal opposition as a byproduct of a pacifist faith. I also see parallels with much of the counterculture experience I’ve known from the hippie era on, where some have remained faithful but many others have flaked away.

The waves of English radicals can be fascinating, from the New Model Army and Levelers, Diggers, and True Levelers on through the Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchists, and others, but for Quakers, the Ranters presented a special cross to bear.

Like Quakers, the Ranters espoused personal experience of ecstatic faith, and the two movements were often confused with each other by the wider public. Unlike the discipline and discipleship among Quakers, though, Ranters had no qualms about sexual promiscuity or any other limitations (it was all God’s will, in their eyes, no matter any hurt to others), at least until persecution hit and they readily recanted. Not so the Quakers, who insisted on eternal Truth. God doesn’t change.

So here we are. What are our deepest values? Where do we stand firm, and where do we yield and bend? What is principle and what is opportunistic? How far out is our vision, and how much a matter of short-term maneuvers?

Where are we – each of us – truly accountable?

Anyone else feeling uncomfortable?

SETTING UP FOR A ‘QUIRKY QUEER QUAKER PERFORMANCE ARTIST AND SCHOLAR’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Peterson Toscano, an extraordinary “Quirky Queer Quaker Performance Artist and Scholar” with bizarre and wonderful stories to share, is coming to my corner of New Hampshire next weekend — and it’s good reason to be excited.

I’ve heard him present the Bible half-hours at Friends General Conference and New England Yearly Meeting and can say he’s both insightful and original in his exploration of Scripture. It’s a matter of encountering a passage for the first time, no matter how often you’ve read it or heard it or think you have. I’ve also seen him delivering his comedy routines to teenagers, not the easiest of audiences, and he’s had them hanging on every word.

His topics will likely range from climate change (from a social justice point of view) and environmental awareness to human rights and gender outlaws in the Bible to coping with privilege or our most tragic losses – and back again. He’s both outrageously funny and a delightfully original thinker. Who would want more?

He’ll appear in the Dover Friends Meetinghouse Saturday at 4 p.m. with his “Everything Is Connected (a collection of stories – many weird, most true)” as a late-afternoon event that’s free to all. We’re hoping this fits in between busy rounds earlier in the day and those of the evening to come – giving folks a shot of humor and hope along the way.

Other performances are at 6:30 p.m. Saturday in Portsmouth, and Sunday at noon in Rochester and in the evening in Concord.

If you can attend any of them, great! Obviously, I’m a big fan. But why not amuse yourself and sample him in his own voice? For starters, let me suggest:

Hope to meet you there, if you can. Meanwhile, we need to get him back from Wisconsin and Maine … en route to Massachusetts.

ELDERS HOLD

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In Quaker practice, elders are what other denominations call bishops, except that in ours and other Anabaptists (Amish, Mennonite, Brethren), they’re found within the congregation, rather than over it. And elders can be young folks, if they’re so gifted.

Elders 1

For a free copy of my poetry chapbook, Elders Hold, click here.

PLACING THE TRUTH IN ANOTHER LIGHT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

As one traditional Quaker query was read aloud during a meeting for worship, one of its phrases began echoing within me: “Truth in the heart.”

How remarkable! Not in the head but rather the heart! Truth, which we see so often as ground in facts and logical consistency, is now assayed not in the brain but rather in the core of our affections.

As early Friends used the word, Truth is much more of a verb than an immutable object. Think of the progression from true to truer to truest. Maybe you can sense that motion in the slightly fuller expression of that day’s query, asking if we, individually and as a group, heed “Love and Truth in the heart” …

As I said, a remarkable phrase.

REVISITING THE EARLY CHURCH, IN PART

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

While walking to Quaker Meeting one Sunday morning, I heard a familiar hymn from my childhood wafting from the open doors at St. Mary’s. About a block later, still humming along, I realized it was the Protestant hymn, “Faith of Our Fathers.”

Well, I thought it was a Protestant hymn, especially now that this music is as likely to be heard in American Catholic services as in the mainstream Protestant ones, which have been drifting toward the newer pop-influenced praise songs. (A musically literate friend, by the way, dubs the rocking chants the Rupture songs.)

Imagine my surprise in learning the hymn in question was written to commemorate the English Catholics martyred in the schism that created the Church of England!

Either way, the questions remain, Whose father? And which faith?

And, as a digression seen in genealogy, we can add that it’s often the mother’s faith that’s followed.

Still, any way you want to look at this, I think it reflects a widespread sense of an earlier “golden age” of faith. Early Quakers, for instance, insisted that they weren’t intent on reforming Christianity, but rather restoring it to a richness from “before the great darkness of apostasy that set upon the church,” something I’d deduced meant from before the first Nicene Council.

And, for balance, many later Quakers looked and still look to the upheavals of that first generation or two of the Society of Friends as a golden era of faithful devotion, something a closer reading of history will challenge.

Now that image of the early church has in turn been challenged in my reading of Richard E. Rubenstein’s When Jesus Became God, which focuses on the tribulations leading up to the Nicene Council and then flowing out of it.

The fact that both major sides in this confrontation were so violent, often as roving mobs, continues to rattle me, along with their allegiance to priests and bishops and the secular power those clergy already carried, even when Christianity itself was at odds with the Roman empire.

More subtle is the emerging schism between the Greek-speaking Christians of the eastern Mediterranean, with their complexity of thought and love of philosophical speculation, in contrast to the more action-oriented Latin-speaking Christians to the west, who lost much of the subtlety of the debate. Already, the tensions between the metropolitan bishops, or theoretically equal “popes,” of the eastern Mediterranean sea and Rome were mounting. If Rubenstein is right, the schism between the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Roman Catholics was taking shape even before the Nicene Council, no matter how later history records the tragic events.

All of this leaves me asking just when the church moved from synagogues and home-based circles into a priestly class abetted by passionate mobs in the streets.

As Rubenstein repeats, there came a point when Jews were no longer part of the discussion but were rather persecuted.

Now, let us consider. Could that be when “the dark night of apostasy” arose?

LIMITATIONS AS A FOCUSING LENS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The old strictures sought to keep Quakers focused on their religious calling. As Damon D. Hickey explains (The Southern Friend, Volume XXVII, Number 2, 2005) them, “This cross, this obedience that was called for, was in the broadest sense the death of self-will and obedience to the inward Christ. … Thus, worldly amusements, especially dancing, were a waste of precious time and unfit the mind for devotional exercises. Music was the devil’s instrument. The Lord called his people to leave the world’s friendships, vain fashions, … sinful amusements, which would include the movies, the theatre and the dance. Perhaps this part would not much apply to our readers, but … in nearly all the so-called Quaker Colleges and Preparatory Schools dancing is practiced.”

He continues to quote 1943-44 writings by North Carolina Wilburite Anderson M. Barker, who argued that by yielding to Christ the Ruler

He will rule out all hurtful reading, and preserve all from putting too much time upon the news, and other such readings, to the neglect of the Bible and other good books, which have to do with our eternal interests.

Then there’s the quotation, “We Quakers only read true things,” told by a boy returning three novels he’d borrowed from a neighbor. Or what is erroneously sometimes called a Quaker hymn from North Carolina, which is usually heard these days in folk music circles, “How Can I Keep From Singing?” Or the recorded ministers who dragged me to an apple barn in Ohio for my first contradance, only to hear the next morning an elderly friend wearing a bonnet rise and wag a finger into the air, warning us of “that evil amongst us known as folk dancing” – while others looked down, sheepishly, trying to suppress a grin.

From the beginning of the movement, we have Margaret Fell’s objection to the strictures of a “silly gospel” that took hold, all the same.

Or later Quakers who accepted things that bind and pinch, as long as they’re chosen.

Or the struggle to keep a vibrant faith and intellect, rather than a barren one.

Always, the tension, in Scripture, between one world, “And God saw that it was good,” and another, sometimes called the ways of the world or even the wayward world.

So the challenge is in keeping a focused life that avoids becoming simply barren.

Let me point to the proportions of the classic meetinghouses – elegance as simplicity – plus the emphasis on philanthropy. Poetry as prayer.

So here we are, with our love of movies, music, theater, visual arts – and a tad of guilt?

I hear an echo of my father, with his passion for big-band music and some of the old hymns, “It would be a lesser world without music.”

I think, too, of a couple who lived without electricity as part of a strict economy that allowed them to focus full-time on calling and playing for country dances.

So here we are, with a visitor asking after the rise of worship – “Are you the pastor?” Before I could say anything, a voice behind me: “He is, he just doesn’t know it.”

Look, I want everyone to sit on the facing bench (elders gallery) at least once a year. “Her turn – next, a child.” Facing each other across history.

~*~

Elders 1

For more on my poetry collection and other reflections, click here.

Light 1