Quaker

I wasn’t raised Quaker but came to it by a roundabout route as a young adult. As you’ll see in my writings, my spiritual life has journeyed far from the mainstream Protestant confines of my Midwestern youth. Sensing something essential was missing in our denomination – and undergoing a harsh emotional crisis during my senior year of high school – I rejected everything I’d been taught, or so I thought, and drifted through degrees of agnosticism and logical positivism before encountering yoga a year after graduating from college.

That chance introduction during the high hippie era led to weekly physical exercise sessions that awakened a desire within me to learn even more, which I did eight months later by moving to our teacher’s headquarters, or ashram, in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. It was a life-changing though seemingly irrational decision, yet one that led me into deep meditation, spiritual discipline, and intimate community, as I relate in my novel Yoga Bootcamp. The one big difference was that our leader was a woman, not a male swami.

It was, however, no place for me to live forever, and so 18 months later I resumed my secular career in the “outside world.” That move also steered me into sitting in silent worship on Sunday mornings with Quakers, or the Society of Friends, not knowing the denomination had been the faith of my Hodson/Hodgson/Hodgin ancestors from its very beginning in England and Ireland, a side I present in my genealogical blog, the Orphan George Chronicles.

In my moves since then, I’ve practiced with Friends in all of today’s branches, from liberal “unprogrammed” open-worship to old-order Wilburite discipline to evangelical pastor-led services, in addition to treasured Mennonite and Greek Orthodox connections. Mixing in insights from the ashram’s Hindu roots and my fascination with Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and even Native wisdom, I’d describe myself as a Christocentric convergent Friend. Or, to add a touch of scandal, to declare that Christ is bigger than Jesus. Quite simply, I’ve found what was missing in my adolescence, romantically as well, thank you.

Sitting in weekly silent Quaker worship has provided me both the freedom and nurture for ongoing, continued spiritual growth and discovery. In joining with the Society of Friends, as we Quakers are formally known, I’ve come to treasure our communities of faith and a host of very remarkable individuals. Guided by sets of questions (the queries) rather than creeds, and by direct, daily experience rather than ethereal speculation, Friends embody a radical Christianity that emphasizes simplicity, equality, honesty, nonviolence and pacifism, and personal integrity.

As clerk (the presiding officer) at Friends business sessions, where all decisions are made in unity, without ever taking a vote, I’ve learned to sense that one individual, rather than the majority, may be closer to the optimal outcome – and to allow room for “Way to open” as others unite around that position or even a third unanticipated solution that may surface to our awareness.

When we’re faithful and closely follow our Guide, the process of reaching this harmony can be exquisite. When we fall short, though, what we feel can be excruciating, ultimately demanding forgiveness and contrition.

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MY CLOSE EXAMINATION of the writings of the original “Children of the Light” and “Seekers After Truth” in mid-1600s Britain has convinced me that the first Quakers perceived an alternative Christianity – one they dared not voice fully, given the deadly consequences of the blasphemy laws of the period. Couched in their interlocking metaphors of the Light, the Seed, and the Truth is an outline strikingly different from conventional interpretations of Christ and the person of Jesus.

After presenting my findings at Friends workshops and then publishing sections of them as pamphlets, they now comprise Light Seed Truth: Metaphors of radical faith, available available as an ebook in the digital platform of your choice through Smashwords.com and its associated retailers.

A faith based on the revolutionary working of deep personal experiences rather than law, even divine law, leads to a radically different faith and practice, as Quaker faith has demonstrated. 

What I present will come as a surprise for most Friends today, not just readers from other perspectives.  

Whatever your spiritual practice or tradition, my examination offers inspiration for continuing practice. Let me know if it doesn’t challenge and transform your outlook.

For more, click here. 

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MY HISTORY OF THE DOVER QUAKER MEETING, or congregation, my religious home for most of my 34 years in New Hampshire, turned into an eye-opening alternative history of colonial New England and well beyond. Serving as its clerk, or presiding officer, for five of those years, and as clerk of the larger Quarterly Meeting for six, was a most humbling and deepening labor – one where many of those Mennonite and ashram experiences proved valuable.

As I discovered, nobody had any idea that Dover Friends’ roots along the Piscataqua River went back as far as they do until I delved into this research.

According to my calculations, it’s one of the seven oldest Quaker Meetings in the New World. It’s definitely older than any in Pennsylvania or New Jersey.   

My research also pointed to a countercurrent to the dominant Puritan character of New England’s colonial era.

Do take a look. Just click here.

It’s also offered as a print-on-demand paperback through Draft 2 Digital you can order through your favorite bookstore or request at your local library.

As Friends Journal magazine noted in its March 2023 issue, “What was it about Dover, N.H., on the Piscataqua River separating it from Maine, that enabled early Friends ministers to establish first a toehold and then to gather a third of the populace into the meeting, in spite of New England’s violent opposition to Quakers? This book offers an alternative history to the usual Puritan-centric stories. Jnana Hodson examines those who chafed at the theocratic restrictions and dogmas, and who objected to them and resisted in various ways.”

Reviewer Marty Grundy observed: “The author likes to connect the dots, as he says. Drawing on David Hackett Fischer’s 1989 Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, Hodson notes that settlers in Salem, Mass., and Dover were from Devonshire, with its culture of hospitality, whereas most of the Puritans came from East Anglia with very different folkways. Of course history is not just the result of the larger, impersonal scope of folkways, economic and political forces, or social class. It is lived by individuals who are part of families, individuals who make personal choices and influence those with whom they live. So Hodson also traces family connections showing that both a bold embrace of Quakerism and bitter persecution of the disturbers of the status quo tended to run in families.

“Written as a history of Dover and of Dover Meeting, the book is also filled with verbal asides as the author comments on what he is discovering and sharing with the reader. He offers various versions of events and cheerfully acknowledges when he can’t find facts to fill in gaps. Especially toward the end, he offers genealogy tying together some of the major early families. … 

“The book is an artifact of COVID in that it was created using what is available on the web, including secondary sources, much older published accounts, and summaries of meeting minutes, rather than deciphering the actual holographic minutes in the archives at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As anyone knows who has tried to do historical research recently, there is a gratifyingly wide variety of materials available electronically. Hodson has done a good job of mining; juxtaposing; and, as he says, “connecting the dots” to produce a somewhat speculative but eminently well-argued and documented account of how a counterculture took root and flourished in colonial New Hampshire.”

The project has also led to public appearances, some of which show up on YouTube or other sites. Among them:

Pembroke, Maine, Historical Society

 

Related work has appeared in the magazines Friends Journal, Quaker Life, and Quaker Theology. I have also presented workshops at New England Yearly Meeting and the annual Friends General Conference.

My essays on Quaker spirituality also appear at my blog As Light Is Sown.

Tintype portrait by John DiMartino Jr. (johndimartinojr.com)