Category: Quaker Practice

PRACTICING ADVENT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

As I’ve previously mentioned, Quakers historically were among those Christians who did not observe Christmas, much less celebrate it as a holiday. Of course, I’ve also noted that it’s hard to live as a “peculiar people” within a wider society and not run up against the festivities, especially if you have children. (It’s far easier to be a minority if you’re not the only one or even the only family. Preserving your distinct identity really does require a community.)

Add to that the fact that Quakers do not follow a set liturgy through the year, although I might argue we’ve had a very subtle one based on the seasons and our quarterly and yearly meeting gatherings or even our monthly sets of queries.

One of the queries, though, reminds us of the importance of preparing ourselves during the week for our Meetings for Worship – taking daily time for prayer, reflection, Scripture, and spiritual readings. In that vein, joining with my wife in a book of readings for Advent seems to fit right in.

Finding the right book, though, has been another matter. Some years, we’ve found that the commentary and accompanying discussion questions don’t really fit with the Scriptural text or the excerpts from significant authors that open the daily reading. Other times, the focus veers into speculation, away from personal experience and encounter, and has felt less than edifying.

This year’s another matter, I’m happy to report. The book we’re following – Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life by Margaret Kim Peterson – isn’t even set up as daily readings, much less of an Advent sort, but the pages are working … well, let me use an old English word I’ve come to treasure, goodly. Not perfectly, then, but goodly.

The narrative opens with a defense of keeping house – something that has, as Peterson notes, become tainted in modern American society, even as it’s taken on a Martha Stewart mythology. Put another way, what we’re looking at is theology from a woman’s reality. As she argues, feeding and clothing the poor doesn’t have to mean people we don’t know. In modern society, impoverishment comes in many forms, even for people who seem to have more than enough material goods. People like us.

You can see where this is going – right to the heart of our daily survival.

Of course, I can also ask: What recommendations do you have for next year’s readings? Anything that’s especially moved you? Are there particular practices you find helpful? Any noteworthy memories? What are you doing this Advent, if anything? If you’re not in a Christian tradition, are there other winter solstice practices you find satisfying and would like to present?

Advent, we should remember, is quite different from a holiday shopping season.

MARKING THOSE CALENDARS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Universally among Friends, you will find a roomful of calendars whipped out during announcements. (Or at least we did – these days it’s more likely to be Smartphones and the like, even for those in the retirement years.)

We need help keeping all of our activities in order, after all.

Religions also have their seasonal schedules, something known as a liturgical calendar. We chance upon it when we hear of saints’ days, Advent, Lent, or, of course, Christmas and Easter. Historically, Quakers rejected all of that – even birthdays or anniversaries went unobserved. That’s not to say we didn’t have our own kind of liturgical calendar. Quarterly and Yearly Meeting sessions were much more important than they are now, times of family reunions and courtship as much as religious business. Feasting, too, would be part of the celebration, as I can testify from one such gathering in a Wilburite Quarter in North Carolina – “It looked like the first Thanksgiving,” is how my traveling companion described it to his wife afterward. Fifth Month always reminds me of Salem Quarter in Ohio, the annual time when rhubarb was added to the ever-present applesauce. (For the record, the associations also run the other way; show me rhubarb, and I’m suddenly thinking of Salem.)
When it comes to celebrating, we’re not nearly as strident these days. Our Quaker calendars are overlaid with birthdays, anniversaries, secular holidays, Christmas, Easter, maybe even Super Bowl Sunday (where I live, depending on how the Pats are doing). It’s enough to make me wonder what we’ve lost along the way, as well as what we’ve gained. The many ways our focus has changed. In the meantime, don’t forget to pick out your calendars for the coming year – whatever size and style you find most fitting. The Tract Association of Friends has the one that keeps the old-style naming of the months and the days of the week, along with pithy quips from Scripture and historic Quakers.

And here we go again.

‘TIS THE SEASON, FA-LA-LA, FOR AN ALTERNATIVE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Here, in the midst of the annual holiday season excess, is a good time to remember that for most of our history, Quakers did not celebrate, in their words, “that day the world calls Christmas.” In New England, at least, they were joined by the Puritan legacy. In Massachusetts, for instance, Christmas was not legal until the 1850s.

Of course, these days it’s very difficult to ignore the hoopla – especially if you have children present. And I’m not even going to get into that Santa Claus stuff.

What I will do, however, is speak of the practice of Advent – observing the weeks building up to Twelfth Month 25th as a period of preparation and anticipation. Babies, after all, arrive only after nine months (or so) of pregnancy, and there’s much to be said for the changes in both the mother and the father in that period. Some Advent calendars come with verses and stories for the family to share over dinner.

Admittedly, by not bringing the tree in until Christmas Eve and not taking it down until Epiphany (the real Twelfth Day of Christmas, contrary to what some advertisers broadcast), you’ll be out of step with most of American society. That can have its own revelations, as you recognize the struggle some other faith traditions have here. But you may also find that unwrapping the presents can just be the beginning of a holiday fullness, not its anticlimax. Actually, our tree usually stays up a few weeks past Epiphany, but that’s another story. Oh, yes, and remember to have a few oranges. (Speaking of other stories.)

~*~

My wife makes reference, too, to all the Puritan diaries from New England, which recorded December 25 pointedly and repeatedly as “an ordinary day.”

ADDRESSING THE QUERIES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

As Ohio Yearly Meeting’s Book of Discipline stated, the Queries and Advices “provide a means for maintaining a general oversight of the membership pertaining to our Christian life and conduct. … It remains this Yearly Meeting’s heartfelt desire that good order and unity may be maintained among us … the attention of each member of the Society should be drawn at regular intervals to individual self-examination … To aid the members in this exercise, a series of both Queries and Advices is provided to impress upon the minds of us all various principles and testimonies which should guide our daily lives.”

The tradition was for Quakers (the Society of Friends) to ponder a set of these Queries at each monthly meeting for business and have someone draft a summary to be reviewed the next month. (This is in contrast to the weekly times of worship on Sunday, or “First-Day,” morning and, if possible, sometime during the week.) The monthly meeting’s summaries would then be reviewed at the next quarterly meeting – a gathering Friends from nearby meetings – and another summary would be drafted, to be shared in a similar manner at the larger yearly meeting.

When I was living in Baltimore, one Friend suggested that those of us living at a distance from our home meetings sit down and partake in this exercise and then mail our written answers to our home meeting. Although intending to take up this practice, I procrastinated and Winona received nothing until a personal invitation arrived, gently urging me to join in the exercise.

Many of my short essays and poems originate in those responses, now turned from addressing the community of faith to the Source itself and outward again.

PLAYING UPON THE LOONY TUNES, TOO

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

One acquaintance, preparing to be married under the care of another meeting, finally concluded you couldn’t find so many loonies collected in one place if you tried. There are times I suspect most of us would agree, especially when we get jammed on an item of business. We are an intelligent, opinionated, independent bunch of people. It’s said of us, as I also heard Jews at temple refer to themselves, that where twelve are gathered on an issue, you’ll have thirteen points of view.

Our way of doing business, requiring unity but no voting, requires us to try to listen carefully to each Friend. In practice, this can be difficult, especially if someone opposed to a proposal refuses to speak up or speak fully or, perhaps more serious, refuses to attend the business sessions where the matter is being considered. Sometimes, knowing there is unvoiced opposition, we will lay an agenda over to the next session, hoping for better representation – itself an admission that low turnout for our monthly meeting for worship for the conduct of business may also indicate its low priority in our lives. Laying it over, in turn, can often mean beginning all over again as a different set of individuals addresses the issue. Moreover, being present is essential, because miracles can occur in the session. Sending a statement on paper or via another Friend avoids moving with the Spirit in the meeting. There are times when being uncomfortable in the context of business meeting is healthy, and a sense of agreeing to disagree for a while may in turn lead to a third way and innovative resolution.

Our structure of doing business, in which each Friend is expected to participate in the operation of our faith community, can also be subject to breakdown. Individuals may fail to follow through on promised action, or not step forward at all for committee service. The work then falls back on a small core of Friends, who quickly become overburdened. Has there ever been a period when all of our committees were sufficiently filled and operating smoothly? It’s a lovely ideal, all the same, one that makes me all the more grateful for committees that are running well through the year.

Other dysfunctions arise in business meeting when we veer from the decision at hand, usually by trying to introduce a host of other problems and concerns – that is, trying to solve many of the world’s problems instead of replacing a furnace; when we forget the tenderness of the individuals involved and their motivations; when we try to redo work a committee has already labored over; when a committee comes forward to business meeting without finding unity on the proposal, hoping we can do what they couldn’t; or when we leap ahead toward a project we’re unlikely to give full support over time.

Once upon a time, reflecting on the traditional assumption that our business meetings would be led by Christ and that our job is simply to listen for the answer, I jested, “I don’t think Jesus cares what color the carpet is.” A decade or two later, when we were faced with that actual, prolonged decision, I had to add: “But he does care how we engage one another in deciding.” People can and do come away from our deliberations with hurt feelings, and it’s something requiring our mindfulness. Being opinionated doesn’t necessarily have to mean being heartless, even unintentionally. In the rug decision, the reaction of Friends in bringing heirloom Asian carpets to the meetinghouse for the wedding, while we were still deliberating the choice of permanent floor cover, remains a colorful reminder of the third way and its surprises.

We also need to be mindful that working through differences on small things is practice that strengthens us, as a body, for larger, more difficult issues.

DISTINCTIVES AS A MATTER OF FINE DINING AND FAITH

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Maintaining particular elements that set a faith community apart from the larger society as well as a desire to be like everyone else provokes a basic tension in religious history. In Quaker tradition, we see it especially in the Hicksite Separation and later, with the Gurneyites, as many Friends adopted pastoral worship and turned their meetinghouses into “churches,” sometimes complete with a bell. The problem that arises along the way is that other values, like the Peace Witness, can also be eroded on the road to a generic Protestant practice or New Age miasma. (Or, increasingly these days, both.)

It’s important that we remain aware of what are known as “distinctives” – in our stream of Quakerism, the unprogrammed worship, simple meetinghouses, and decision-making process are highly obvious. Once, our discipline of Plain dress and speech, our system of “guarded education” in Quaker parochial schools, and our avoidance of public entertainments would have also set us apart. Scholars look for distinctives when they examine a spectrum ranging from sect to denomination, where something like the presence of an American flag in the sanctuary can say much about how far the congregation buys into the values of the surrounding culture. (The Mennonite fellowship I participated in was viewed with some suspicion because we enjoyed going to Baltimore Orioles games – together, at that. Ahem.) Often, it’s seen as those scholars look to reasons one Amish group differs from another. The width of a man’s hat band, for instance, or even buttons. It’s the way the little things add up to strengthen more important matters. I’m not saying any of this is easy.

Once, while dining in Little Italy in Baltimore, I overheard a couple talking to the co-owner of a restaurant. They were telling him how, on a visit to New York, they kept hearing everyone speak about how his place was the best one back home. Finally, he interrupted, saying, “If you don’t believe you’re the best restaurant in Little Italy, you shouldn’t be here.” While some people detect a degree of arrogance in that, I sense a humility and an admiration of his competitors – a desire for excellence and an admiration for those touches that make each restaurant distinctive. Ways that encourage each other to do better, too.

I turn that to our own neighboring faith communities with an admiration for congregations that uphold their own meaningful distinctives. Each one, with the potential of enriching the others. We Friends need not add glittering icons or glorious pipe organs or triune water baptism to our service, but we can dialogue and even worship with those who have them – and maybe all come away with deeper amazement and resolve in our own daily practice.

Hey, it was only a month ago I was reveling in Greek dancing — admittedly, not as part of the Orthodox service but certainly as part of the community. Along with all of the food.

MONET AT THE WINDOW

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

I’ve often joked (or was it boasted?) that we have the best stained glass windows in town. And not just at this time of year. Actually, there’s something basic in the Quaker practice of having clear windows, whether the view opens to the city jail next door or a busy highway or a placid burial ground – we’re not isolating ourselves from reality when we worship.

Sitting on the clerk’s bench one morning one May, I found myself looking out at a Monet. Well, the spring green for three-quarters of the hour fit the tones he used, until it turned metallic in the last quarter-hour when the sunlight turned harsh. Most weeks after that, I tried to identify which painter the view brought to mind – a sequence of Corot, Diebenkorn, Mitchell, Twombly, Klimt, Pollack, even the Zen painting of six persimmons (ours, however, had about twice that amount of fruit), and maybe a bit of Chagall or Hopper. (What was I saying about our Meeting not being blue-collar? Here I am, expecting most Dover Friends to know most of these artists!) Occasionally, even a Kaufmann, as Dick and Jane’s heads appeared in the lower corner while they walked up the ramp to the door. Sometimes the dogwood tree presented a flat image; other times it had holes, opening to the depth behind it; eventually, come winter, it was only sketches in front of a more distant landscape, and etchings, rather than paintings, came to mind. Expecting the Monet to return the next May, it didn’t, for whatever combination of reasons, although there was one week when it was adorned with pale stars – its flowers.

Not that any of this is essentially profound, other than as a recognition of the play of light – just as we encounter various presentations of Light within the room and ourselves through the hour. But I do consider ways our perceptions and expressions differ from the earliest Friends who sat in the room. These artists, for one thing, came after them, except for the 12th century persimmons (and those were off in China, anyway); the now familiar language from science or psychology, too, to say nothing of sports jargon and even military expressions. Did those Friends ever have a bagpiper playing at the edge of the yard, or some equivalent to our sirens on the street or music from a neighboring church? How did they see the world, in ways that we don’t? Somehow, all kinds of differing eras come together when we, too, sit together. So just how do we see each other through all of these seasons and ages?

~*~

This piece originally appeared in Types and Shadows, the newsletter of the Fellowship of Quaker Artists.

IN THIS JOURNEY TOGETHER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 14 Comments

I’m always startled to hear people say they can pursue spirituality without any teacher or community. Nothing in my experience, as a yogi or a Christian, supports that. If you point to George Fox’s time of sitting “in hollow trees and lonesome places,” and his recognition that among the priests (and preachers) he consulted, “there was none among them that could speak to my condition,” and his eventual proclamation of discovering “the pure knowledge of God and of Christ alone, without the help of any man, book, or writing,” the fact remains that he was stimulated by that early dialogue and, once he’d experienced Divine Revelation, did not keep it to himself but was instead drawn out to others who were having similar transformations.

I would point, too, to the spiritual support he received initially from Elizabeth Hooten – whom I consider the first Quaker and who, incidentally, came across the Atlantic in her advanced age to Dover to minister among Friends here — and later from Margaret Fell.

One reason we need community to accompany our spiritual deepening and expansion comes in the ways it can counter tendencies toward self-deception, human weakness, laziness, or distraction. In the practice of our faith, we instruct, encourage, acknowledge, embrace, correct, inspire, comfort, guide – even rebuke – one another. These are matters the New Testament calls discipleship.

Lloyd Lee Wilson has reminded us there are no Quakers apart from the meeting, which is another way of saying each Friend needs to be part of this interactive dynamic. I remember my shock in picking up a book on leaders of the Confederacy and finding three Quakers indexed; “Impossible,” I muttered, until seeing in the text that all three had been raised in Quaker households but resided far from any meeting – and its corrective discipline – when the war erupted.

Try dressing Plain and adhering to Plain speech without a circle of Plain Friends at hand, and you’ll discover just how hard it is to continue even an outward practice. Maintaining a witness is no less difficult. Moreover, I find it’s hard to keep from being overwhelmed by the negative influences around us. Maybe part of the restorative answer is right in front of us all along – Society of Friends, plural.

Or in some other, similar circle.

HARD-HEADED RESOLVE IN THIS MATTER OF DIVERSITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

May I plead for some hard-headed Friends in our midst? We’ve been blessed with many compassionate, sensitive, open-hearted individuals. (Not that we wouldn’t welcome many, many more to join in our circle.) But in our emotions and good intentions, we can also be easily swept up in more than we can handle as a faith community.

There are many reasons to value the Friend who asks the hard or even embarrassing question in the midst of our business discussions, even if we find ourselves momentarily annoyed. The one who keeps asking, How will we pay for this? Who will do it? What are the long-term consequences? Where’s the documentation? Sometimes it’s someone who sees needed repairs and sets about getting them done. The legal issues and nagging details, too. Often, it seems like throwing a wet blanket over our enthusiasm, but I’d rather have that happen before we set out on a venture than have us break down in discouragement when unexpected difficulties arise once the project is in motion or we find we lack the time and commitment to follow through.

For all of our talk of diversity, we do tend to be largely a self-selected group – like attracted to like – and this can leave us with some large gaps in our skills and outlooks. Any auto mechanics or accountants, for instance? Or, as the French novelist Andre Gide once asked, Where are the shoemakers and cobblers in the Society of Friends these days? Which is another way of saying, the people who help us keep our feet on the ground when we’re caught up in the Spirit.

A ROCK AND THE RIPPLE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Looking back on the passing of Silas (all those years ago, now) also stirs an acknowledgment of a major transition in our Meeting, something that had been in process over recent years as he retreated from the active business of our fellowship, all the while remaining a guiding spirit. Now came the finality and the reality. What’s become apparent in our recollections is that despite our emphasis on equality and the avoidance of hierarchy, some Friends are more dedicated, committed, active, forceful (fill in your own words) in their service than are others. This is a statement of fact, not a value judgment. The two decades I knew Silas, after all, came in his retirement years – which were focused fully on his passionate causes.

Maybe we were also admitting we had no one stepping into his shoes. And maybe, to some extent, that’s a good thing – he was, let’s face it, a character all his own. On the other hand, a lot of tasks in Meeting are left unfilled, to our own loss. How we would address these in the coming years was yet to be revealed.

By coincidence, we had a message a few weeks earlier about the absence of guru-style teachers among Friends. Even so, as I wrote, we encounter a string of teachers in our Quaker practice, each one a unique presence. Among them, we would have to count Silas. A Boston Globe at the time carried a story of another, by then in a nursing home in Washington state, and a violin that he’d begun making in prison during World War II, finally completed by his grandson and a friend. As I started to retell this story of someone I’d last seen more than a quarter-century previously, my younger daughter interrupted me to say she’d heard the report on public radio. With all of these overlapping circles, it can be a small world, indeed, and sometimes rather timeless. Maybe our harmony, too, will be heard, well beyond our imagining.

What I feel now is gratitude for each one in our fellowship, and the gifts we bring together. Wherever we are going in the coming years is not entirely in our own hands, but an opportunity for a revelation in faith. Maybe our being here, itself, was not entirely in our own hands, either. That, coupled with a wondering about our ripples and how far they might carry.

~*~

A wonderful documentary with Silas is now available as an online video. Just click here.