In chanting. Practice, yes, rather than theory. [Playing off “enchanting.”]

Stayed over in Seattle, motel. Meeting First-day and had my membership session with Jacqueline Garnett … [an older Friend; my clearness committee being just one, however unconventionally] … “And what does Jesus mean to you?” Ah, the difficult question! Turns out she’s read the Coptic Gospels … [As I’ve recalled the question, it was “what does the Bible mean to you?” I stand corrected.] “Believed he was the son of God.” Sacrifice / duty / love.

Then a late lunch with DeeDee and Jerry. Drive back for Meeting at the Scotts. “Quaked out” by bedtime Sunday …

“My desk is my altar” — AFSC staffer

~*~

Meeting in Yakima the next week, upstairs room at YWCA while Unitarians worshipped downstairs; no one else present. I’m very restless. (Big Ego in control.)

Kitty wondered why I went. Somebody had to be there.

At the Grows’, sipping wine, like birds overlooking the Upper Valley … sun and wind … session with AFSC or FCNL field rep reviewing agricultural situations, which always seem to create difficulties. Policies just don’t fit the needs at hand.

9:VIII:79

Thursday, after Meeting at Truebloods

[so sometimes we had midweek worship? Or was this more of an organizational i.e. business discussion?]

We turned to the matter of where we want Meeting to go in the next year. Study hours, dialogue, worship in homes versus in a public space like the YWCA as a Unitarian connection, First-day schooling for our children, what works best for our Ellensburg Friends, and so on … No clearness yet but two weeks to consider, with Meeting at our place next. Seeds have been planted.

The children like homes, as does Phyllis, for the personal connection. And yet a public space can be more inviting to curious seekers.

Zenny’s Zen saying: “In form there is emptiness. In emptiness there is form.”

Either way, seeking / needing / expecting some resolution.

~*~

Zenny’s Meeting newsletter goes to the printer.

~*~

Irwin and Betty dropped in Sunday afternoon after tennis matches in Wenatchee. Kitty whipped together a marvelous dinner out of nearly nothing more than green noodles and a fresh peach pie.

Thus we were late to Mtg at Grows, discussion of format was underway when we arrived. Then I realized I forgot to pick up Hans and Linda, still feel guilty and inadequate over that.

21:X:79, First-day

Still exhausted from whatever bug this is, running around the Valley: out of work a day and a half: cough, clammy, sore throat, no energy. Last weekend, mostly rest. Missed Quarterly Meeting.

A clearness committee at QM opened way for Zenny and Bloom to move to Oregon, where they might be starting a Quaker junior high and/or retreat center with the Bears and others at Deadwood, most likely. A $100,000 offering for the project a major seed.

Perhaps in five years we can join them?

Smitty Bear came back with Zenny from Oregon to help them move and stayed over Tuesday night. I don’t know what it is about him, but he stimulates my thinking, opens my head. Viz: separate men’s and women’s business meetings allowed spiritual growth in families — each spouse was free to feel and explore without worrying about the other.

No electricity at their place. That is, generator-power only. Investigating trickle generator to keep batteries charged, a small unit like the line dragged from yachts …

Ben Richmond’s concern to Zenny: “What’s the good of starting all these Meetings if there’s no fire in them?”

Smitty’s “on a scale of one to ten, Corvallis was a nine or ten. Most are two or three.” And later, “If you wanted to start a form of worship and make it as hard as possible, you’d wind up with a Quaker Meeting.” But also, he noted, the most satisfying when it delivers.

… Zenny and Bloom returning from Lamaze class …

Nancy Trueblood’s feeling she doesn’t need Meeting. Zenny told her, “You should talk to Kitty about that. She feels the same way.”

18:XI … after a trip to Seattle … Jerry was off in Philadelphia on AFSC biz. “It makes you feel important when someone else pays the fare,” DeeDee said.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

In reviewing these journals, I’ve been surprised how much earlier spring came there than it does in northern New England where I’ve lived the last four decades.

4:VI:78

While the rest of Friends were off camping, Kitty and I spent Saturday at home: sunbathing nude in our yard. Then Sunday, off to join them at McDaniel Lake / Meeks Table.

Ward raised the question of where our Meeting’s going and why it seems lacking … and became clerk, with a desire expressed for weekly worship … and discussion …

So that we may all grow together, share together, focus together, learn together \ Sangha de Sacre Sangre.

Ward admitting that in trying to live life fully, deeply, he has so much trouble in knowing and expressing his deepest self clearly …

Ivar hoping the men of the Meeting can get together once a month or so for a meal or whatever to share ourselves as men and get to know each other far better (the women, said he, seem able to do this where men usually don’t) … perhaps a work party, rotating among households?

Going up to the Table, Nancy asked about my beads, opening up a whole ashram rap … [was I still wearing these to the office, under my tie?]

 Near Horseshoe Bend (something becoming 1/3 of the horseshoe it was before the highway department cut it short), there clumps of blooming prickly pears were blossoming — incredibly beautiful — thin, waxy, pale yellow large petals enclosing large red stamins having yellow tips = amid flat-leaf oblong cacti with long spikes “deadly as a rattlesnake” — the buds are pink, for some reason. [It remains one of my favorite flowers.]

After a year of drought — driest year on record — rains came and the desert bloomed brighter, deeper than anyone could remember …

~*~

Sunday night, Quaker Meeting at the Grows’. Ward wondering if he can take on clerk responsibilities now that he’s been named chief-of-staff at the hospital. Today Kitty sez she thinks I’ll wind up as clerk this year. [Which is what happened. The only technicality was that I’d have to be a formal member of the Society of Friends, a step I hadn’t yet taken.]

In the latest 4^th New Age Directory, I found nothing listed for Stroudsburg PA — is the Poconos Ashram experiment over? Old New Age people get thrown out or for a loop? Or has the ashram closed to outsiders (as per plan)? Now is not my time to break the silence with Swami. Or had I been ostracized?

Trying to write a Crossroads piece on Quarterly Meeting realizing how many simple words have taken on complex meanings only Friends can understand, including the overtones of “Meeting” or “Friend”

That session of QM was then held at Clear Lake, on our side of the Cascade Crest … first time ever that far east.

When the decision was made with trepidation to hold the QM session outside of the Puget Sound area, they feared low turnout — instead, had the largest attendance yet: 150 in a camp with 92 beds …

Kitty remarking later how many people she met shined.

~*~

Rippled by reaction to movement toward preparative meeting status. We’re been crying out for help but only to ourselves. We’ll see if I become clerk, as Ward has proposed. (Kitty wishes someone would simply take charge and do it.)

The QM gathering gave me faces for names I had heard.

~*~

Sunday, I was approved as clerk … still as junior swami, right?

~*~

Zenny, visiting over the weekend with a cider press: “salvation” akin to Zen “kensho,” a rebirth of spirit or awakening.

Next QM at Fort Warden: should I arrange a reading that Saturday night in Port Townsend?

 

The state ferries on Puget Sound were a highlight of many of our trips to the “wet side” of the Cascades, especially when we were going beyond Seattle. I’ve long considered such ferry rides as a “poor man’s cruise.” Here’s one with the Olympic Peninsula’s Mount Pershing, Jefferson Peak, Mount Cruiser, Mount Skokomish and Mount Stone in a photo by Tiffany Von Arnim. Often, though, clouds, rain, and fog obscured their appearance. Port Townsend was a repeated destination.

~*~

How hard it is to dwell in my own heart, keep peace, radiate from there. How hard to “know my own landscape,” my own resources, to “live at home” and not “go to town for stimulation.”

Or is it simply that I’m trying to cover too much ground?

~*~

Mtg, First-day, seems we’re getting a “2^nd group” in contrast to the original “evening group” — morning core of Truebloods, Jean, Barbara Rankin, Becky, Cathy, Eric, and me. Perhaps now our “Brothren” Friends Emily and Roger, too.

We were on a schedule that alternated Sunday morning worship at the YWCA, same time and place as the Unitarians on one week with Sunday evening gatherings in homes the next. The morning’s were downtown, easily accessible for newcomers. The evenings included potluck dinners and a more social setting that also gave us the earlier part of the day to explore the outdoors, as we were inclined to do. Or, if needed, to sleep in late.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

When you sit for Meeting and see only chessmen on a board around you, you’ve lost touch with yourself.

Who knows whose game has you trapped, much less in what game.

Example of miscommunication:

“Are you Saved?”

“Are you Self-Realized?”

“Are you Yielded?”

Before Self-Realization, my belief that truth or the mystery could be found and answered in a woman’s love, classical music or jazz, a fine set of books. And thus the constant sorrow interspersed with flashes of delight. Now, further along, a taste of energy that goes so far beyond as well as a dryness of what’s been lost.

As for the girls I desired in high school? How common! [Sex and spirituality are closer and more essential than is often acknowledged. My, this could fill volumes!]

3 July, ’77 … evening Quaker Mtg at Dory Matson’s, the Wilkenings were there … Ellensburg?

First Mtg after summer: 20 adults, five children.

Me, thinking of the Mountains and Rivers sutra

and our Meeting’s love of hiking-skiing-camping

3:X: Been wondering about the break with the ashram, whether it even still exists …

What is the role of religion in a “man’s world”?

To give death meaning?

To uphold what’s good, noble, heroic?

To overcome the Little I?

Meeting last Sunday was at Michael and Tarn’s …

My first Quaker memorial service was Ken Scott’s …

The difficulty most had with the silence, women whispering (gossiping?) to husbands, etc., a packed room — having many standing didn’t help. The service began with the family singing songs informally …

He was 31 …

~*~

JESUS APOLLONIUS

Did Christianity change the Romans?

Or did they change Christianity?

Their vestal virgins redressed as nuns?

Thus, the Reformation

as another uprising of Germanic tribes

against Roman tribute

The mafia

supports its church

~*~

ARE WE GETTING CLOSER TO QUAKERS OR ZEN?

“There were no representatives of the gods inside; the place was empty, and the secret shrine contained nothing” — Pompey, on the Second Temple of Jerusalem

“They worship on the clouds and the Spirit of the heavens” — popular saying of the Jews, recorded in Juvenal.

Geeze, is that all it takes to confound Empire?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

So we were settling in.

our orchard tenant shack here
like Snyder’s place in Dharma Bums
out back of a holy family’s
out toward the birds
and simple
like the long-legged house
of Wendell Berry’s uncle
close to nature
beside the river

Noz [our black cat, half-Siamese] goes berserk when we’re not home: rolled a geode across the floor and ripping caulking from the windows …

Noted on 15:VIII:77: Kitty received notice of her in-state status today. Next up, $50 in the mail to Central.

A week later: With Celeste over Saturday night.

And then we to Seattle Sunday: dinner at Costas [my delight at souvlaki?}, then a movie house of 99 seats, lobby three times larger than the viewing room …

In the morning, my wishing Kitty would say something profound rather than weeping over a slender girl or some fine threads …

Back in our desert orchard:

Tarts baked in stars

So hot that apples sunburn

and I’d thought Ivar’ was joking

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

In the morning, beside the fire, Kitty said if we were still in Indiana, we’d be at Meeting right now, which spurred thoughts of friends and places. Then Carol Grow phoned, to say the Dolphs had friends/guests coming from Oregon and we’d meet at 8 — no potluck, just what turned out to be good, deep energy.”

Was this Smitty Young Bear?

Ivar noting “something strange” in the Valley, the lack in most of it of older, well-maintained structures — instead, the use of trailers, storefronts, a “boom town” attitude … we were also into a deep drought.

The Scotts, of Ellensburg, home from sabbatical … they’re highly regarded and outgoing … but their son is dying, something that returns them to Friends after backing off for years — burned too often, too much standing up for conscience, let somebody else do it …

In short, the Quaker gathering was becoming the center of our social world.

 As I noted 6:III:

Meeting growing closer, deeper, with strong, invisible bonds … a beautiful, loving communion … speaking initiated by Louie’s strange, deep, loving, and troubling speaking … our next meeting will be at their place … where I would pick up what I thought was a curious white, striated and very heavy rock from their mantelpiece only to be told it was a mastodon tooth …

On 17 apr:

Meeting in E’burg, in the morning, at Joe and Myrtle Wilkening’s … they can’t come Sunday nights but mornings or Saturdays are good … also got the address for another place to meet here, through them …

Later, we stopped at the Dolphs’ on our way back from a salmon bake in Toppenish we couldn’t find. Cut asparagus along the canal banks. Learned their little tenant shack is up for rent. Now, trying to find the courage to move in there … smaller but much, much cheaper …

At home, finding an ad in Crossroads, another couple sitting for Meeting … called them and learned of two other couples. So our Quaker circle here, in a single day, has grown by half again, if we arrange ourselves …

~*~

Ten days later, we were half-moved into the little house … and trying to cut back to fit into it …

So the move took place at the end of April? I would have placed it a month a letter, from memory.

The move put us much closer to the earth and agriculture that were so essential to the existence of the county. It would also spur much of the action in my novel, Nearly Canaan. It brought me closer to the culture and ecology of our environment.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

On the 12^th, received two pieces of mail. The first, a list of local Friends and their addresses from University Meeting in Seattle.

The second, a letter from Swami urging me to stop procrastinating and return to the ashram.

A perplexing, even symbolic, clash but neither to be taken lightly. Especially a message from one’s guru stated directly and forcibly. Yet my guru-of-gurus, my heart, is not there. I am not ready to answer beck-and-call, to go back to a single trunk, to do no personal writing (or submissions). I have taken on responsibilities and opportunities here and perceive a need for Yoga/Quaker alternative to fundamentalist jangling, even before considering possibilities Native poets and others offer to my outlook.

Then yesterday received a challenging, derogatory rejection from Loon, as if to say, “Why are you bothering to write?”

24:X:76

Cold, damp, in a Binghamton mood / my aura dark gray, the one who has known God and is now out-of-light yet sitting in the morning, lifting me away …

And then a strange call from Tacoma Friends … me sounding phony yet happy to hear from another …

The 2^nd Yakima Quaker gathering, my first, came after 17:XI … the phone number and directions for Tom and Carol’s …

Out Summitview to 74^th, turn right up a grade with orchard on right, straight to end and take a left, West Lincoln going west a half-mile, starts to up over irrigation canal, a T go left, PRIVATE DRIVE DO NOT ENTER, around crush rock, past house under construction, the only house on left, go up to 2^nd driveway, park on (?)

The Meeting here started worshipping in September, as if by my prayer … once a month, initially, with potluck and children …

21:XI:76 … got a letter from Tacoma Meeting and a call from Seattle Sunday night (arranging to be there).

Continuing 21:XI:76, first mention of Zenny and Bloom, who stayed over at our place … she was happy to have a shower, since they have neither a shower nor electricity yet on their blackberry farm … the house was uninhabited 11 years, in the woods with a wood-stove …

Kitty realized, from talking to them, how middle-class we’ve become — she’d been wondering (from her coworkers) if we were really strange

Extended talks with Zenny, and his Buddhist background, explored fronts of reconciliation between Yoga/Zen and Quaker traditions, “Eastern paths Quaker stumbled onto by fits and starts but without full knowledge of what it had discovered”

Also, how much wasted time in becoming convinced! How much unnecessary agony! How many fall away who could be helped by clearer direction?

So much bad information / misinformation is floating around out there!

Also raises matters of theatrics or colors rather than heart-essence. All around. (For Friends, the thees and thous or Quaker Oats figure.)

Already, I was glimpsing how the “Christ trap,” as I saw it, as Lord and Savior leads into “salvation” and “sinners” and the shallowness of “I’ve found it!” In this line of thinking, Friends were left vulnerable to the Methodist/Baptist pickings, depleting Quaker ranks.

Many seekers in Christian veins have been turned away by verbose non-answers (Fox: how they turn upon themselves), shallowness, lack of compassion, exploitation of man and nature (including persecution of others), and self-righteousness.

Yes, Jesus was divine. But what about others, too? “If I understand Friends correctly, all men are divine,” including women and children. (Today I would add that many turn their backs on it and despise it.)

Quaker faith is Christian and more. Sitting in silence returns us to our own hearts, our truest guru.

I do not mean book learning but rather the practice between a teacher and student, leading to an awareness within the student of his own God-nature, regardless of whether the term “God” enters into it (in many ways, the Quaker term “Light” is far better — no images of the Sunday School

[Today I’m surprised how closely these early observations develop into LightSeedTruth.]

29 nov, note another letter from Swami Lakshmy, for money (again) and questioning increasingly deeply …

Need for sacrifices, even though we are not making it financially — in fact, most of my pay steps from Fostoria have gone into rent (from $50 a month to $135 ti $275) and then into art supplies, food, and clothing … the car still the same …

4:XII:76 still bummed out by Swami’s (increasingly) harsh/strident letters, because I was already in the midst of a what-am-I-doing-here contemplation in the weeks before and been suffering root rot regarding writing — a dry, dryest of hearts: loss of laughter) …

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.